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A 

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

THROUGH 

FRANCE AND ITALY 


BY 


/ 


LAURENCE STERNE 

M 


ILLUSTRATED BY MAURICE LELOIR 



TROY, N.Y. 

NIMS AND KNIGHT 
1892 


^ ^ r , 



* 






< <• 











A 

SENTIMENTAL 


JOURNEY. 








Prefatory memoir of L. Sterne IX 

A Sentimental Journey 1 

Calais 3 

The monk. — Calais 5 

The monk. — Calais 8 

The monk. — Calais 10 

The desobligeant. — Calais 12 

Preface in the desobligeant 14 

Calais 20 

In the street. — Calais 23 

The remise door.— Calais 26 

The remise door. — Calais 29 

The snuff-box. — Calais 32 

The remise door. — Calais 35 

In the street. — Calais 38 

The remise. — Calais 41 

The remise door. — Calais 43 

The remise. — Calais 46 

In the street — Calais 48 

Montriul 52 

Montriul 55 

Montriul 58 

Montriul 60 

A fragment 62 

Montriul 64 

The bidet 67 

The dead ass. — Nampont 70 

The postilion. — Nampont 73 

Amiens 75 

The letter. — Amiens 78 

The letter 82 

Paris 84 

The wig.— Paris ’ 86 


-c VI >- 


The pulse. — Paris 

The husband. — Paris ^ 

The gloves.— Paris 

The translation. — Paris 99 

The dwarf. — Paris 103 

The rose. — Paris 108 

The fille de chambre. — Paris Ill 

The passport. — Paris HO 

The passport. — The hotel at Paris 110 

The captive. — Paris 124 

The starling. — Road to Versailles 127 

The address. — Versailles 130 

Le patissier. — Versailles 133 

The sword.— Rennes 137 

The passport. — Versailles 140 

The passport. — Versailles 144 

The passport. — Versailles 146 

The passport. — Versailles 149 

Character. — Versailles 151 

The temptation.— Paris 154 

The conquest 158 

The mystery.— Paris 160 

The case of conscience. — Paris 163 

The riddle. — Paris 166 

Le dimanche. — Paris . . . 168 

The fragment. — Paris 172 

The fragment.— Paris 174 

The fragment, and the bouquet. — Paris . 179 

The act of charity. — Paris 181 

The riddle explained. — Paris 184 

Paris 186 

Maria. — Moulines 190 

Maria .... 193 

Maria. — Moulines . . -195 

The Bourbonnois 19 q 

The supper . ..... 200 

The grace 203 

The case of delicacy 205 




1 . 

2 . 

3 . 

A. 

5 . 

6 . 


7 . 

8 . 


9 . 


10 . 


11 . 

12 . 


Laurence Sterne .... 
Preface in the desobligeant 

The snuff-dox 

Montriul 

Nampont 

The letter 

The pulse 

Le patissier 

The temptation 

Maria 

The grace 

The case of delicacy. . . 


Frontispiece. 

. . . 15 

... 33 

... G5 
... 71 

. . . 79 

... 91 

... 135 

. . . 155 

... 191 

... 203 

... 209 





Laurence Sterne was one of those few 
authors who have anticipated the labours of 
the biographer, and left to the world what they 
desired should be known of their family and, 
their life : 

“ Roger Sterne (says this narrative) grand- 
Archbishop Sterne, Lieutenant in Handaside regiment, was 
to Agnes Hebert, widow of a Captain of a good family... 
born November 24, 1713, at Clonmel, in the south of 
few days after my mother arrived from Dunkirk. My 
was ominous to my poor lather, who was, the day of 
with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift 
in the wide world, with a wife and two children. — He left Ireland 
as soon as I was able to be carried, with the rest of his family, 
and came to the family seat, at Elvington , near York, where his 


son to 
married 
... I was 
Ireland, a 
birth - day 
our arrival 


-c \ 


mother lived. She was daughter to Sir Roger Jacques, and an 
heiress. There we sojourned for about ten months, when my 
father’s regiment was established, and our household decamped 

with bag and baggage for Dublin We travelled by land to Wick- 

low. We lived in the barracks at Wicklow one year (1720); from 
thence we decamped to stay half a year with Mr. heatherslon, a 
clergyman, about seven miles from Wicklow; who, being a relation 
of my mother’s, invited us to his parsonage at Animo. It was in 
this parish, during our slay, that 1 had that wonderful escape in 
falling through a mill-race, whilst the mill was going, and of being 
taken up unhurt... In this year (1721) I learnt to write, etc... My 
father got leave of his colonel to fix me at school, — which he did 
near Halifax, with an able master : with whom 1 stayed some lime, 
till, by God’s care of me, my cousin Sterne, of Elvinglon, became 

a father to me, and sent me to the university My father's 

regiment was sent to defend Gibraltar, at the siege, where my father 
was run through the body by captain Phillips, in a duel (the quarrel 
began about a goose); with much difficulty he survived, though with 
an impaired constitution , which was not able to withstand the 
hardships he was put to — for he was sent to Jamaica, where he 
soon fell by the country fever. — My father was a little smart man, 
active to the last degree in all exercices, most patient of fatigue and 
disappointments, of which it pleased God to give him full measure. 
He was in his temper somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly 
sweet disposition , void of all design ; and so innocent in his own 
intentions, that he suspected no one; so that you might have cheated 
him ten times in a day, if nine had not been sufficient for your 
purpose. My poor father died in March 1731. I remained at Halifax 
till about the latter end of that year, and cannot omit mentioning this 
anecdote of myself and schoolmaster : — He had the ceiling of the 
school-room new white-washed; the ladder remained there. 1, one 
unlucky day, mounted it, and wrote with a brush, in large capital 
letters : LAU. STERNE, for which the usher severely whipped me. 
My master was very much hurt at this, and said, before me, that 
never should that name be effaced, for 1 was a boy of genius, and 
he was sure I should come to preferment. This expression made 
me forget the stripes I had received. In the year 32. my cousin 


-C Xt 3- 


sent me to the university, where l stayed some time... I then came 
lo York, and my uncle got me the living of Sutton; and at York I 
become acquainted with your mother, and courted her for two 
years : — she owned she liked me, but thought herself not rich 
enough, or me too poor, to be joined together. She went to her 
sister’s in S — ; and I wrote to her often. I believe then she was partly 
determined to have me, but would not say so. At her return, she fell 
into a consumption; — and one evening that I was sitting her, with 
an almost broken heart to see her so ill, she said : “ My dear Laurey, 
I never can be yours, for 1 verily believe 1 have not long to live! but 
I have left you every shilling of my fortune ”. Upon that, she showed 
me her will. This generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that 
she recovered, and I married her in the year 1741. My uncle and 
myself were then upon very good terms; for he soon got me the 
Prebendary of York; — bathe quarelled with me afterwards, because 
I would not w rite paragraphs in the newspapers; — though he was a 
party-man, I was not, and detested such dirty work, thinking it 
beneath me. From that period he became my bitterest enemy- By my 
wife’s means, I got the living of Stillington; a friend of hers in the 
south had promised her, that, if she married a clergyman in York- 
shire, when the living became vacant, he would make her a compliment 
of it. I remained near twenty years at Sutton, doing duty in both 
places. I had then very good health. Books, painting, and fiddling, 
and shooting, were my amusements. —In the year 17G0, I took a 
house at York for your mother and yourself, and w’ent on to London 
to publish my two first volumes of Shandy. In that year Lord Falcon- 
bridge presented me with the curacy of Coxwould ; a sweet retirement 
in comparison of Sutton. In 62, I went to France before the peace 
was concluded ; and you both followed me. I left you both in 
France, and in two years after, 1 went to Italy for the recovery of 
my health; and, when 1 called upon you, I tried to engage your 
mother to return to England w ith me; she and yourself arc at length 
come, and I have had the inexpressible jov of seeing my girl every 
thing I wished for. 

“ 1 have set down these particulars relating to my family and self for 
my Lydia, in case hereafter she might have a curiosity , or a kinder 
motive , to know them. ” 


\ 


-c XII >- 


To these notices, the following brief account of hisdeath has been 
added by another writer : — 

As Mr. Sterne, in the foregoing narrative, has brought down the 
account of himself until within a few' months of his death, it remains 
only to mention that he left York about the end of the year 1767, and 
came to London, in order to publish the Sentimental Journey, which 
he had written during the preceding summer at his favourite living of 
Coxwould. His health had been for some time declining; but he con- 
tinued to visit his friends, and retained his usual flow’ of spirits. In 
February 1768, he began to perceive the approaches of death; and 
w ith the concern of a good man, and the solicitude of an affectionate 
parent, devoted his attention to the future welfare of his daughter. 
After a short struggle with his disorder, his debilitated and worn- 
out frame submitted to fate on the 18th day of March 1768, at his 
lodgings in Bond Street. He was buried at the new burying-ground 
belonging to the parish of St. George, Hanover Square. 

To these Memoirs we can only add a few circumstances. — Unlit 
1739, Sterne had only printed two sermons; but in that year he 
surprised the world, by publishing the two first volumes of Tristram 
Shandy. In a letter to a nameless doctor, who had accused him of 
writing in order to have minimum in loculo, he declares he wrote not 
to be fed, but to be famous. Tristram, however, procured the author 
both fame and profit. The brilliant genius, which mingled with so 
much real or affected eccentricity, — the gaping astonishment of the 
readers who could not conceive the drift or object of the publica- 
tion, with the ingenuity of those w ho attempted to discover a meaning 
of passages which really had none, gave the book amost extra- 
ordinary degree of eclat. But the applause of Ihe public was not 
unmingled with censure. — The tumult was loud on all sides; amid 
shouts of applause and cries of censure, the notoriety of Tristram 
spread still wider and wider, and the fame of Sterne rose in pro- 
portion. The author therefore triumphed, and bid the critics defiance. 
“ I shall be attacked and pelted ”, hesavs, in one of his letters, “ either 
from cellar o/ garret, write what 1 will, and besides must expect to 
have a parly against me of many hundreds, who either do not, or 
will not, laugh — ’tis enough that 1 divide the world — at least I will 
rest contented with it. ” On another occasion he savs: “ If my 


-c XIII >- 


enemies knew that, by this rage of abuse and ill-will, they were effec- 
tually serving the interest both of myself and works, they would be 
more quiet; but it has been the fate of my betters who have found 
that the way to fame is like the way to heaven, through much tribula- 
tion ; and till I shall have the honour to be as much maltreated as 
Rabelais and Swift were, 1 must continue humble, for I have not 
filled up the measure of half their persecutions. 

The author went to London to enjoy his fame. — The third and 
fourth volumes of Tristram appeared in 1761, and the fifth and sixth 
in 1762. Both these publications were as popular as the two first 
volumes. The seventh and eighth, which came forth in 1765, did not 
attract so much attention,’ although they contain some of the most 
beautiful passages ’ which ever fell from the author's pen. — Four 
additional volumes of Sermons appeared in 1766, and in 1767 the 
ninth and last volume of Tristram Shandy. “ I shall publish, he says, 
but one this year; ond the next I shall begin a new work of four 
volumes, which when finished, I shall continue Tristram with fresh 
spirit. ” 

The new work was unquestionably his Sentimental Journey ; for 
which, according to the evidence of La Fleur, Sterne had made much 
larger collections than were ever destined to see the light. The 
author’s health was now become extremely feeble; and his Italian 
travels were designed, if possible, to relieve his consumptive com- 
plaints. The remedy proved unsuccessful; yet he lived to arrive in 
England and to prepare for the press the first part of-the Sentimental 
Journey, which was published in 1768. — In this place, we may insert 
with propriety those notices of Sterne, which appeared in Mr. Davis’s 
interesting selection of anecdotes, which he has infilled Olio : 

“ La Fleur was born in Burgundy. When a mere child, he con- 
ceived a strong passion to see the world, and at eight years of age ran 
away froriS his parents. His prevenancy was always his passport, and 
his wants were easily supplied — milk, bread, and a straw bed 
amongst the peasantry were all he wanted for the night, and in the 
morning he wished to be on his way again. This rambling life he 
continued, till he attained his tenth year, when being one day on the 
Pont Neuf at Paris, surveying with wonder the objects that surroun- 
ded him, he was accosted by a drummer, who easily enlisted him in 


-c \1V >- 


the service. For six years, La Fleur beat his drum in the French 
army; two years more would have entitled him to his discharge, but 
he preferred anticipation, and exchanging dress with a peasant, 
easily made his escape. By having recourse to his old expedients, he 
made his way to Montreuil, where he introduced himself to Varenne, 
who fortunately took a fancy to him. The little accomodation he 
needed was given him with cheerfulness; and as what we sow we 
wish to see flourish, this worthy landlord promised to get him a 
master; and, as he deemed the besL not better than La Fleur merited, 
he promised to recommand him to tin Milord Anglais. He fortunately 
could perform as well as promise, and he introduced him to Sterne, 
ragged as a colt, but full of health and hilarity. The little picture 
which Sterne has drawn of La Fleur’s amours is so far true. — He 
was fond of a very pretty girl at Montreuil, the elder of two sisters, 
who, if living, he said, resembled the Maria of Moulines; her he 
afterwards married, and, whatever proof it might be of his affection, 
was none of his prudence, for it made him not a jot richer or happier 
than he was before. She was a mantua-maker, and her closest appli- 
cation could produce no more than six sous a day; finding that her 
assistance could go little towards their support, and after having had 
a daughter by her, they separated, and he went to service. At length, 
with what money he had got together by his servitude, he returned to 
his wife, and they took a public-house in Royal Street, Calais. — 
There ill luck attented him, — war broke out; and the loss of the 
English sailors, who navigated the packets, and who were his princi- 
pal customers, so reduced his little business, that he was obliged 
again to quit his wife, and confide to her guidance the little trade 
which was insufficient to support them both. He returned in 
March 1/83, but his wile had fled. A strolling company of come- 
dians, passing through the town, had seduced her from her home, 
and no tale or tidings of her have ever since reached him. From the 
period he lost his wife, he has frequently visited England, to whose 
native he is extremely partial, sometimes as a sergeant, at others as 
an express. Where zeal and diligence were required, La Fleur was 
never yet wanting... 

“ ••• There were moments, said La Fleur, in which my master 
appeared sunk into the deepest dejection — when his calls upon me 


XV >- 


for my services were so seldom, that 1 sometimes apprehensively 
pressed in upon his privacy, to suggest what I thought might divert 
his melancholy. He used to smile at my well-meant zeal, and, I could 
see, was happy to be relieved. At others, he seemed to have received 
a new soul — he launched into the levity natural a mon pays, and cried 
gaily enough • “ Vive la Bagatelle! ” 

“ It was in one of those moments that he became acquainted 
with the Grisetle at the glove shop— she afterwards visited him 
at his lodgings, upon which La Fleur made not a single remark; 
but on naming the Jille-de-chambre, his other visitand, he exclaimed : 
“ It was certainly a pity she was so pretty and petite 

“ ... Poor Maria ” was, alas! no fiction . When he came up to 
her, she w'as grovelling in the road like an infant, and throwing 
the dust upon her head — and yet few' were more lovely. Upon 
Sterne’s accosting her with tenderness, and raising her in his arms, 
she collected hersef, and resumed some composure— (old him her 
tale of misery, and wept upon his breast. — My master sobbed 
aloud said La Fleur I saw her gently disengage herself from 
his arms, and she sung him the service to the Virgin. Mv poor 
master covered his face w ith his hands, and walked by her side 
to the cottage were she lived; there he talked earnestly to the old 
woman. Every day while we stayed there, I carried them meal and 
drink from the hotel, and whem we departed from Moulines, my 
master left his blessings and some money with the mother. How 
much, added he, I know not— he always gave more than he could 
afford. At many of our stages, my master has turned upon me 
with tears in his eyes : “ These poor people oppress me, La Fleur; 
how' shall I relieve them?” 

“ The dead ass ” w r as no invention. The mourner was as 
simple and affecting as Sterne has related. La Fleur recollected 
the circumstance perfectly. » 

Tofmonks, Sterne never exibited any particular sympathy. La 
Fleur remembered several pressing in upon him, to all of whom 
his answer was the same : “ Mon pere,je suis occupe. Je suis pauvre 
comme vous. ’’ 

... Sterne was tall and thin, with a hectic and consumptive appea- 
rance. His feature, though capable of expressing with peculiar effeat 


-C XVI D- 


the sentimental emotions by which he was often affected, had also a 
shrewd, humorous and sarcastic expression, proper to the wit and 
the satirist... 

The style employed by Sterne is fancifully ornamdftlcd, but at 
the same time vigorous and masculine, and full of that animation and 
force which can only be derived by an intimate acquaintance with 
the early English prose-writers. In the power ot approaching and 
touching the finer feelings of the heart, he has never been excelled^ 
if indeed he has ever- been equalled; and may be at once recorded 
as one of the most affected, and one of the most simple writers, — 
as one of the greatest plagiarists, and one of the most original 
geniuses, whom England has produced. 




A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 

THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY 


— They order, said I, this matter better 
in France. 

— You have been in France? said my 
gentleman, turning quick upon me, with 

the most civil triumph in the world. 

Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with 
myself, that one-and-twenty miles' sailin'g, 
for ’tis absolutely no further from Dover to 
Calais, should give a man these rights : — 
I’ll look into them : so, giving up the argument, — I went 
straight to my lodgings, put up half-a-dozen shirts and a 
bLack pair of silk breeches; — “the coat I have on,” said I, 




-c 


2 >- 

looking at the sleeve, “will do;” — look a place in the Dover 
stage ; and, the packet sailing at nine the next morning, — by 
three I had got set down to my dinner upon a fricaseed chicken, 
so incontestably in France that, had I died that night of an 
indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the 
efforts of the droits d'aubaine; * — my shirts, and black pair of 
silk breeches, portmanteau and all, must have gone to the King 
of France : — even the little picture which I have so long worn, 
and so often told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me into my 
grave, would have been lorn from my neck! — Ungenerous! to 
seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your 
subjects have beckoned to their coast! — by Heaven! Sire, it is 
not well done; and much does it grieve me ’lis the monarch of 
a people so civilized and courteous , and so renowned for 
sentiment and fine feelings, that 1 have to reason with ! 

But 1 have scarce set a foot in your dominions — 


* All the effects of strangers (Swis3 and Scots excepted) dying in Trance arc seized, by virtue of this law, 
though the heir be upon the spot;— the profit of these contingencies being farmed, there -is no redress. 




CALAIS 


When I had finished my dinner, and drunk the 
King of France’s health, to satisfy my mind that I bore 
him no spleen, but, on the contrary, high honour for 
the humanity of his temper, — I rose up an inch 
taller for the accommodation. 

— No, said I, the Bourbon is by no means a 
cruel race: they may be misled, like other 
people; but there is a mildness in their blood. 
As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of a 
finer kind upon my cheek, more warm and friendly to man 
than what Burgundy (at least of two livres a bottle, which was 
such as I had been drinking) could have produced. 

— Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what 
is there in this world’s goods which should sharpen our 
spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out 
so cruelly as we do by the way? 



~c 4 >- 


l fr 

When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a 
feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand ! he pulls out his 
purse, and, holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round him 
as if he sought for an object to share it with. — In doing this, 
I felt every vessel in my frame dilate, — the arteries beat all 
cheerily together, and every power which sustained life per- 
formed it with so little friction, that ’twould have confounded 
the most physical precieuse in France: with all her materialism, 
she could scarce have called me a machine. 

I’m confident, said I to myself, I should have overset her 
creed. 

The accession of that idea carried Nature, at that time, as 
high as she could go ; — I was at peace with the world before, 
and this finish’d the treaty with myself. 

— Now, was I a king of France, cried I, what a moment for 
an orphan to have begged his father’s portmanteau of me ! • 




THE MONK 

CALAIS 



1 had scarce uttered the words, when a 
poor monk, of the order of St. Francis, came 
into the room, to beg something for his convent. 
No man cares to have his virtues the sport of 
contingencies, — or one man may be generous, 
as another man is puissant , — sed non quoad 
hanc; — or be it as it may, — for there is no 
regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours, they 
may depend upon the same causes, for aught I know, which 
influence the tides themselves ; — ’twould oft be no discredit to 
us to suppose it was so : I’m sure, at least for myself, that in 
many a case I should be more highly satisfied to have it said by 
the world — “ I had an affair with the moon, in which there 
was neither sin nor shame,” than have it pass altogether as my 
own act and deed, wherein there Was so much of both. 


-c 6 >• 


—But be this as it may, — the moment I cast my eyes upon 
him, 1 was predetermined not to give him a single sous; and 
accordingly, I put my purse into my pocket, buttoned it up, set 
myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely 
to him. There was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: l 
have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was 
that in it which deserved better. 

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few 
scatter'd white hairs upon his temples being all that remained 
of it, might be about seventy ; but from his eyes, and that sort of 
fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy 
than years, could be no more than sixty : — truth might lie 
between, — he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of 
his countenance, notwithstanding something seem’d to have 
been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed with the 
account. 

It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted,— 
mild, pale, penetrating, free from all common-place ideas of fat 
contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth; it 
look’d forwards, but look’d as if it look’d at something beyond 
this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, 
who let it fall upon a monk’s shoulders, best knows ; but it would 
have suited a Brahmin, and had I met it ujkrn the plains of 
Indostan, I had. reverenced it. 

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes ; one 
might put it into the hands of anyone to design, for’twas neither 
elegant nor otherwise but as character and 1 expression made it 
so : it was a thin Spare form, something above the common size, 
if it lost not the distinction by a bend forward in the figure— 
but it was the attitude of intreaty ; and, as it now stands pre- 
sented to my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it. 

When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; 
and laying his left hand upon his breast (a slender white staff 


-c J >- 


with which he journeyed being in his right) — when I had got 
close ui) to him, he introduced himself with the little story of 
the wants of his convent, and the poverty of liis order; — 
and did it with so simple a grace, — and such an air of 
deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure, 
— I was bewitched not to have been struck with it. 

— A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him 
a single sous. 




THE MONK 

CALAIS 



— Tis very true, said I, replying to a 
cast upwards with his eyes, with which he 
had concluded his address His very true, 
— and Heaven be their resource who have 
no other but the charity of the world ! the 
stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient 
for the many great claims which are hourly 
made upon it. 

As I pronounced the words great 
' claims, he gave a slight glance with his eye 
downwards upon the sleeve of his tunic : — 1 felt the full force 
of the appeal, — I acknowledge it, said l : — a coarse habit, and 
that but once in three years, with meagre diet, — are no great 
matters ; and the true poirtt of pity is, as they can be earn’d 
in the -world with so little industry, that your order should wish 


-c 9 >- 

lo procure them by pressing upon a fund which is the pro- 
perty of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirm! — the 
captive, who lies down counting over and over again the davs 
of his afflictions, languishes also for his share of it; and had you 
been of the Order of Mercy, instead of the order of St. Francis, 
poor as 1 am, continued I, pointing to my portmanteau, full 
cheerfully should it have been opened to you, for the ransom 

of the unfortunate. The monk made me a bow. But of 

all others, resum’d 1, the unfortunate of our own country, 
surely, have the tirst rights : and I have left thousands in distress 

upon our own shore. The monk gave a cordial wave with 

his head — as much as to say. No doubt, there is misery 
enough in every corner of the world, as well as within our 

convent. But we distinguish, said I, laying my hand upon 

the sleeve of his tunic in return for his appeal, — we distinguish, 
my good father, betwixt those who wish only lo eat the bread 
of their own labour — and those who eat the bread of other 
people’s, and have no other plan in life but to get through it in 
sloth and ignorance for the love of God. 

The poor Franciscan made no reply: a hectic of a moment 
pass’d across his check, but could not tarry : — Nature seemed to 
have had done with her resentments in him ; he shewed none : 
— but letting his staff fall within his arm, he press’d both his 
hands with resignation upon h is breast, and retired 




THE MONK 

CALAIS 


heart smote me the moment 
he shut the door. — Psha I 
said 1, with an air of care- 
lessness, three several times, 
—but it would not do; every 
ungracious syllable I had 
uttered crowded back into 
my imagination; 1 reflected 
1 had no right over the poor 
Franciscan but to deny him ■ 
and that the punishment of that was enough to the disap- 
pointed, without the addition of unkind language. I considered 



-c 11 >- 


his grey hairs: — his courteous figure seem’d to re-enter, and 
genliv ask me what injury he had done me? — and why I could 
use him thus? — 1 would have given twenty livres for an advocate. 

— ' ?i 

— 1 have behaved very ill, ^ said I, within myself; but I have 
only just set out upon my travels, and shall learn better manners 
as I gel along 




THE DESOBLIGEANT 


CALAIS 

When a man is discontented with himself, 
it has one advantage, however, that it puts him 
into an excellent frame of mind for making a 
bargain. Now, there being no travelling through 
France and Italy without a chaise, — and Nature 
generally prompting us to the thing we are fittest 
for, I walked out into the coach yard to buy or 
hire something of that kind to my purpose : an 
old desobligeant *, in the furthest corner of the 
court, hit my fancy at first sight ; so f instantly 
got into it, and finding it in tolerable harmony with my feelings, 



* A chaise so called in France, from its holding but one person. 


-c 13 > 


1 ordered the waiter to call Monsieur Dessein, the master of 
the hotel; — but Monsieur Dessein being gone to vespers, and 
not caring to face the Franciscan, whom 1 saw on the opposite 
side of the court, in conference with a lady just arrived at the 
inn, — 1 drew the taffeta curtain betwixt us, and, being deter- 
mined to write my journey, I took out my pen and ink, and 
wrote the preface to it in the desobligeant. 






IN THE DESOBLIGEANT 

It must have been observed, by 
many a peripatetic philosopher, that 
Nature has set up, by her own unques- 
tionable authority, certain boundaries and 
fences to circumscribe the discontent of 
man; she has effected her purpose in the 
quietest and easiest manner by laying him under almost 
insuperable obligations to work out his ease, and to sustain his 
sufferings at home. It is there only that she has provided him 
with the most suitable objects to partake of his happiness, and 
bear a part of that burden which, in all countries and ages, has 







-c 1 5 3- 


ever been too heavy for one pair of shoulders. ’Tis true, we are 
endued with an imperfect power of spreading our happiness 
sometimes beyond her limits; but ’tis so ordered that, from the 
want of languages, connections, dependencies, and from the 
difference in educations, cuslems, and habits, we lie under so 
many impediments in communicating our sensations out of our 
own sphere, as often amount to a total impossibility. 

It will always follow hence, that the balance of senti- 
mental commerce is always against the expatriated adventurer : 
he must buy what he has little 
occasion for, at their own price; — 
his conversation will seldom be 
taken in exchange for theirs without 
a large discount,— and this, by the 
by, eternally driving him into the 
hands of more equitable brokers, for 
such conversation as he can find, it 
requires no great spirit of divination 
to guess at his party. 

This brings me to my point, and 
naturally leads me (if the see-saw of 
this desobligeant will but let me get 
on) into the efficient as well as final causes of travelling. 

Your idle people, that leave their native country, and go 
abroad for some reason or reasons which may be derived from 
one of these general causes : — 

Infirmity of body, 

Imbecility of mind, or 
Inevitable necessity. 

The two first include all those who travel by land or by water, 
labouring with pride, curiosity, vanity or spleen, subdivided 
and combined ad infinitum. 

The third class includes the whole army of peregrine 



-C 1 6 3- 


marlyrs; more especially those travellers who set out upon their 
travels with the benefit of the clergy, either as delinquents, 
travelling under the direction of governors recommended by the 
magistrate; — or young gentlemen, transported by the cruelty 
of parents and guardians, and travelling under the direction of 
governors recommended by Oxford, Aberdeen, and Glasgow. 

There is a fourth class, but their number is so small that 
they would not deserve a distinction, were it not necessary, in 
a work of this nature, to observe the greatest precision and 
nicety, to avoid a confusion of character : and these men 1 speak 
of are such as cross the seas, and sojourn in a land of strangers, 
with a view of saving money, for various reasons, and upon 
various pretences; but, as they might also save others a great 
deal of unnecessary trouble by saving their money at home, — 
and, as their reasons for travelling are the least complex 
of any other species of emigrants, 1 shall distinguish these 
gentlemen by the name of 

Simple Travellers. 

Thus the whole circle ot travellers may be reduced to the 
following heads : — 

Idle Travellers, 

Inquisitive Travellers, 

Lying Travellers, 

Proud Travellers, 

Vain Travellers, 

Splenetic Travellers; 

Then follow 

The Travellers of Necessity, 

The Delinquent and Felonious Traveller, 

The Unfortunate and Innocent Traveller, 

The Simple Traveller, 

And last of all (if you please) The Sentimental Traveller 
(meaning thereby myself), who have travelled, and of which 


-C t7 >- 


I am now silling down lo give an account, — as much out of 
Necessity , and Ihe bcsoin dc voyager , as any one in the class. 

1 am well aware, al the same lime, as both my travels and 
observations will be altogether of a different cast from any of 
my forerunners, that I might have insisted upon a whole niche 
entirely lo myself, but I should break in upon the confines 
of the Vain Traveller, in wishing to draw attention towards me, 
till I have some belter grounds for it than the mere Novelty of 
my Vehicle. It is sufficient for my reader, if he has been a Tra- 
veller himself, that, with study and 
reflection hereupon, he may be able 
lo determine his own place and rank 
in the catalogue, — it will be one step 
- towards knowing himself, as it is 
great odds but he retains some tincture 
and resemblance of what he imbibed 
or carried out, to the present hour. 

The man who first transplanted 
the grape of Burgundy to the Cape of 
Good Hope (observe he was a Dutch- 
man) never dreamt of drinking the 
same wine at the Cape that the same 
grape produced upon the French mountains,— he was loo 
phlegmatic for that but, undoubtedly, he expected lo drink 
some sort of vmous liquor, — but whether good, bad, or in- 
different,— he knew enough of this world lo know that it did not 
depend upon his choice, but that what is generally called chance 
was lo decide his success : however, he hoped for the best; 
and in these hopes, by an intemperate confidence in the fortitude 
of his head, and the depth of his discretion, Mynheer might 
possibly overset both in his new vineyard, and, by discovering 
his nakedness, become a laughing-stock lo his people. 

Even so it fares with the poor Traveller, sailing and posting 



-< 18 >- 


through the politer' kingdoms of the globe, in pursuit of know- 
ledge and improvements. 

Knowledge 'and improvements are to be got by sailing and 
posting for that purpose; but whether useful knowledge and real 
improvements, are alfa lottery;— and, evenjwhere the adventurer 
is successful, the acquired stock'Musl be used with caution and 
sobriety, to turn to any profit :—but~as the" chances run prodi- 
giously the other way both as to the acquisition and application, 

I am of opinion that a man woulcTact as wisely if he could 
prevail upon himself to live cohtented without foreign knowledge 
or foreign improvements; especially if he lives in a country that 
has no absolute want of either; — and, indeed, much grief of heart 
has it oft and many a time cost me when I have observed how 
many a foul step the Inquisitive Traveller has measured, to see 
sights and look into discoveries, ail which, as Sancho Panza said 
to Don Quixote, they might have seen dry-shod at home. It is an 
age so full of light, that there is scarce a country or corner of 
Europe whose beams are not crossed and interchanged with 
others. — Knowledge, in most of its branches, and in most 
affairs, is like music in an Italian street, whereof those may 
partake who pay nothing. — But there is no nation under Heaven, 
— and God is my record (before whose tribunal I must one day 
come and give an account of this work) — that I do not speak it 
vauntingly, — But there is no nation under Heaven abounding 
with more variety of learning, — where the sciences may be more 
fitly woo’d, or more surely won, than here, — where Art is encou- 
raged, and will soon rise high, — where Nature (take her alto- 
gether) has so little to answer for, — and, to close all, yvhere there 
is more wit and variety of character to feed the mind with : — 
Where, then, my dear countrymen, are you going ? 

— We are only looking at this chaise, said they. 

— Your most obedient servant, said I, skipping out of it, and 
pulling off my hat.— We were wondering, said one of them, 


19 >- 


who, I found, was an Inquisitive Traveller , — what could occa- 
sion its motion. ’Twas the agitation, said 1, coolly, of w riling a 

preface, 1 never heard, said the other, who was a Simple 

Traveller, of a preface wrote in a desobligeant, It would have 

.been belter, said 1, in a vis-a-vis. 

As an Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen, I retired 
'to my room. 




CALAIS 



l perceived that some- 
thing darkened the passage 
more than myself, as 1 stepped 
along it to my room; it was 
effectually Mons. Dessein, the 
master of the hotel, who had 
just returned from vespers, 
and with his hat under 
his arm, was most eomplai- 
santly following me, to put me 
in mind of my wants. I had 
wrote myself pretty well out of 
conceit with the desobligeant ; and Mons. Dessein speaking of it 
with a shrug, as if it would no way suit me, it immediately 
struck my fancy that it belonged to some Innocent Traveller y 


-c 21 >- 


who, on his return home, had left it to Mons. Dessein’s honour 
to make the most of. Four months had elapsed since it had 
finished its career of Europe in the corner of Mons. Dessein’s 
coach-yard : and having sallied out thence but a vamped-up 
business at first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on 
Mount Sennis, it had not profited much by its adventures, — but 
l>} none so little as the standing so many months unpitied in 
the corner of Mons. Dessein’s coach-yard. Much, indeed, was 
not to be said for it,— but something might, — and, when a fe\v 
words will rescue Misery out of her distress, 1 hate the man 
who can be a churl of them. 

— Now, was 1 the 
master of this hotel, said I, 
laying the point of my fore- 
finger on Mons. Dessein’s 
breast, I would inevitably 
make a point of getting rid 
of this unfortunate dcso- 
bligeant; it stands sw inging 
reproaches at you every 
lime you pass by it. 

Mon Dieu ! said Mons. Dessein , — 1 have no interest 

Except the interest, said I, which men of a certain turn of 
mind lake, Mons. Dessein, in their own sensations, — I’m 
persuaded, to a man w ho feels for others as well as for himself, 
every rainy night, disguise it as you will, must cast a damp 
upon your spirits. You suffer, Mons. Dessein, as much as the 
machine. 

1 have always observed, when there is as much sour as 
sweet in a compliment, that an Englishman is eternally at a loss 
within himself whether to take it or let it alone; a Frenchman 
never is; Mons. Dessein made me a bow. 

C'est bien vrai , said he. — But, in this case, I should only 



22 


exchange one disquietude for another, and with loss. Figure to 
yourself, my clear Sir, that in giving you a chaise which would 
fall to pieces before you had got half way to Paris, — figure to 
yourself how much ! should suffer, in giving on ill impression 
of myself to a man of honour, and lying at the mercy, as 1 
must do, d’un homme d’esprit. 

The dose was made up exactly after my own prescription ; 
so 1 could not help taking it, — and returning Mons. Dessein his 
bow, without more -casuistry we w alked together knvards Jiis 
remise, to lake a view of his magazine of chaises. 



#■ 


I 



IN THE STREET 

CALAIS 



It must needs be a hostile kind of 
a world, when the buyer (if it be but 
of a sorry postchaise) cannot go forth 
with the seller thereof into the street 
to determine the difference betwixt 
them, but he instantly falls into the 
same frame of mind, and views his 
conventionist with the same sort of eye, 
as if he was going along with him to 
Hyde Park Corner to fight a duel. For my own part, being 
but a poor swordsman, and no way a match for Mons. Dessein, 

I felt the rotation of all the movements within me to which 
the situation is incident; — 1 looked at Monsieur Dessein through 


24 *- 


and through, — eyed him as he walked along in profile, then en 
face; — thought he looked like a Jew, — then a Turk, — disliked 
his wig, — cursed him by my gods, — wished him at the Devil! 

And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a beg- 
garly account of three or four louis d’or, which is the most 
1 can be overreached in? — Base passion! — turning myself 
about, as a man naturally does upon a sudden reverse of sen- 
timent, — base, ungentle passion ! thy hand is against every man, 

and every man’s hand against thee. “Heaven forbid ! said 

she, raising her hand up to her forehead, for I had turned full 
in front upon the lady whom I had seen in conference with 
the monk : — she had followed us unper- 
ceived. Heaven forbid, indeed! said I, 

offering her my own ; — she had a blade pair 
of silk gloves, open only at the thumb 
and two fore-fingers, so accepted it without 
reserve, — and I led her up to the door of 
the remise. 

Monsieur Dessein had diabled the key 
above fifty times before he found out he had 
come with a wrong one in his hand : we 
were as impatient as himself to have it opened, and so 
attentive to the obstacle that I continued holding her hand 
almost without knowing it; so that Mons. Dessein left us 
together, with her hand in mine, and with our faces turned 
towards the door of the remise, and said he would be. back in 
five minutes. 

Now, a colloquy of five minutes, in such a situation, is 
worth one of as many ages, with your faces turned towards the 
street. In the latter case ’tis drawn from the objects and occur- 
rences without ; — when your eyes are fixed upon a dead blank 
— you draw purely from yourselves. A silence of a single 
moment, upon Mons. Dessein’s leaving us, had been fatal to 



-c 25 > 


the situation, — she had infaillibly turned about; — so I began the 
conversation instantly. 

— But what were the temptations (as I write not to apologize 
for the weakness of my heart in this tour, — but to give an 
account of them) — shall be described with the same simplicity 
with which I felt them. 




Till*: REMISE DOOR 

CALAIS 

When 1 told the reader that l did not 
care to got out of the desobligeanl , because 1 
saw the monk in close conference with the 
Indy just arrived at the inn, I told him the 
truth; but I did not toll him the whole truth; 
for I was full ns much restrained by the 
appearance and figure of the lady he was 
talking to. Suspicion crossed my b n nin, and 
said he was telling her what had passed : something jarred 
upon it. within me, — 1 wished him at his convent. 

When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves 
the judgment a world of pains. — I was certain she was of a 
better order of beings : — how ever, 1 thought no more of her, but 
>venl on and wrote my preface. 



-C 27 


The impression relurned upon my encounter with her in 
the street; a guarded frankness, with which she gave me her 
hand, showed, I thought, her good education and her good 
sense; and, as 1 led her on, I felt a pleasurable ductility about 
her, which spread a calmness over all my spirits. 

—Good God ! how a man might lead such a creature as this 
round the world with him ! 

I had not yet seen her face, ’twas not material , for the 
drawing was instantly set about, and, long before we had got to 
the door of the remise, Fancy had finished the whole head, and 
pleased herself as much with its fitting 
her goddess, as if she had dived into the 
Tiber for it; — but thou art seduced, and a 
seducing slut; and albeit thou chealesl us 
seven limes a-day w,ith thy pictures and 
images, yet with so many charms dost thou 
do it, and thou deckestout thy pictures in 
the shapes of so many angels of light, ’lis 
a shame to break with thee 

When we had got to the door of 
the remise, she withdrew her hand from across her forehead, 
and let me see the original : — it was a face of about six-and- 
twenty,— of a clear transparent brown, simply set off without 
rouge or powder; — it was not critically handsome, but there 
was that in it which, in the frame of mind I was in, attached 
me much more to it, — it was interesting; I fancied it wore the 
characters of a widow’d look, and in that slate of its de- 
clension which had passed the two first paroxysms of sorrow, 
and was quietly beginning to reconcile itself to its loss; — 
but a thousand other distresses might have traced the same 
lines; 1 wish’d to know what they had been,— and was ready 
to enquire (had the same bon ton of conversation permitted ns 
in the days of Esdras), — “ What aileth thee? and why art thou 



-C 28 >- 


disquieted? and why is thy understanding troubled ?" — In a word, 
I felt benevolence for her, and resolved, some way or other, to 
throw in my mite of courtesy, if not of service. 

Such were my temptations; — and in this disposition to give 
way to them, was 1 left alone with the lady, with her hand in 
mine, and with our faces both turned closer to the door of the 
remise than was absolutely necessary. 



i 



THE REMISE DOOR 

CALAIS 



This certainly, fair lady, said I, raising 
her hand up a little lightly as I began, 
must be one of Fortune’s whimsical 
doings; to take two utter strangers by 
their hands, — of different sexes, and, perhaps, from different 
corners of the globe, and in one moment place them together 
in such a cordial situation as Friendship herself could scarce 
have achieved for them, had she projected it for a month. 

— And your reflection upon it shows how much, Monsieur, 
she has embarrassed you by the adventure. 

When the situation is what we would wish, nothing is so 

ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so. 

You thank Fortune, continued she;— you had reason, — the 
heart knew it, and was satisfied ; and who but an English philo- 


-c 30 >- 


sopher would have sent notice of it to the brain to reverse the 
judgment? 

In saying this she disengaged her hand, with a look which l 
thought a sufficient commentary upon the text. 

It is a miserable picture which I am going to give of the 
weakness of my heart, by owning that it suffered a pain, which 
worthier occasions could not have inflicted. — I was mortified 
with the loss of her hand ; and the manner in which I had lost it 
carried neither oil nor wine to the wound. I never felt the pain 
of a peevish inferiority so miserably in my life. 

The triumphs of a true feminine heart are short upon these 
discomfitures. In a very few seconds she laid her hand upon the 
cuff of my coat, in order to finish her reply; some way or 
other, God knows how, I regained my situation. 

— She had nothing to add. 

I forthwith began to model a different conversation for the 
lady, thinking, from the spirit as well as moral of this, that 1 had 
been mistaken in her character; but, upon turning her face 
towards me, the muscles relaxed, and I saw the same unpro- 
tected look of distress which first won me to her interest : 
— melancholy! to see such sprightliness the prey of sorrow, 
— I pitied her from my soul; and, though it may seem ridicu- 
lous enough to a torpid heart, — 1 could have taken, her info my 
arms, and cherished her, though ' was in the open street, 
without blushing. 

The pulsation of the arteries along my fingers pressing 
across hers, told her what was passing within me. She looited 
down : — a silence of some moments followed. 

I fear, in this interval, 1 must have made some slight efforts 
towards a closer compression of her hand, from a subtle 
sensation 1 felt in the palm of my own, — not as if she was 
going to withdraw hers, — but as if she thought about it; 
— and I had infaillibly lost il a second time, had not instinct, 


-c 31 >- 


more than reasc.., directed me lo the last resource in these 
dangers, — to hold it loosely, and in a manner as if I was every 
moment going to release it of myself: so she let it continue till 
Mons. Dessein returned with the key; and, in the meantime, 1 
set myself to consider how 1 should undo the ill impressions 
which the poor monk’s story, in case he had '.old it her, 
must have planted in her breast against me. 




THE SNUFF-BOX 

GALAIS 

The good old monk was within 
six paces of us as the idea of him 
cross’d my mind; and was advancing 
towards us, a little out of the line, as 
if uncertain whether he should break- 
in upon us or no. He stopped, how- 
ever, as soon as he came up to us, 
with a world of frankness, and , having 
a horn snuff-box in his hand, he presented it open to me. 

You shall taste mine, said I, pulling out my box (which 

was a smalU tortoise one), and putting it into his hand. 

’Tis most excellent, said the monk. Then do me the 

favour, I replied* to accept of the box and all; when you 
take a pinch out of it* sometimes recollect it was the 








< 33 > 


peace-offering of a man who once used you unkindly, bul 
not from his heart. 

The poor-monk blush’d as red as scarlet. Mon Dieu ! said 
he, pressing his hands together, you never used me unkindly. 

1 should think, said the lady, he is not likely. 1 blush’d 

in my turn-; but from what movements, I leave to the few, who 
feel, to analyse. Excuse me, Madam, replied I, — I treated him 

most unkindly; and from no provocations. ’Tis impossible, 

said the lady. My God ! cried the monk, with a warmth of 

asseveration which seemed not to belong to him, — the fault was 

in me, and in the indiscretion of my zeal. The lady opposed 

it; and I joined with her, — in maintaining that it was impos- 
sible that a spirit so regulated as his could give offence to any. 

I knew not that contention could be rendered so sweet 
and pleasurable a thing to the nerves as I then felt it. We re- 
mained silent, without any sensation of that foolish pain which 
takes place when, in such a circle, you look for ten minutes in 
one another’s faces without saying a word. Whilst this lasted, 
the monk rubbed his. horn-box upon the sleeve of his tunic; 
and as soon as it had acqaired a little air of brightness by the 
friction, he made a low bow, and said, ’Twas too late to say 
whether it was the weakness or goodness of our tempers which 
had involved us in this contest, but, be as it would, — he 
begged we might exchange boxes. — In saying this, he presented 
his to me with one hand, as he took mine from me in the 
other ; and having kissed it, — with a stream of good nature in 
his eyes, he put it into his bosom, — and took his leave. 

I guard this box as 1 would the instrumental parts of my 
religion, to help my mind on to something better. In truth, I 
seldom go abroad without it ; and oft and many a time have I 
called up by it the courteous spirit of its owner to regulate my 
own, in the jostlings of the world: they had found full em- 
ployment for his, as I learnt from his story, till about the forty- 


-c 34 >- 

fifih year of his age. when, upon some military services if. 
requited, and meeting at the same time with a disappointment 
in the tenderest of passions, he abandoned the sword and the 
sex together, and took sanctuary, not so much in his convent 
as in himself. 

1 feel a damp upon my spirits as 1 am going to add that, in 
my last return through Calais, upon inquiring after Father 
Lorenzo, 1 heard he had been dead near three months ; and 
was buried, not in his convent, but, according to his desire, in 
a little cemetery belonging to it, about two leagues off. I had a 
strong desire to see where they had laid him, — when, upon 
pulling out his- little horn-box, as I sat by his grave, and pluck- 
ing up a nettle or two at the head of it, which had no business 
to grow there, they all struck together so forcibly upon my 
affections that I burst into a flood of tears; — but I am as weak 
as a woman ; and I beg the world not to smile, but pity me. 



THE REMISE DOOR 


CALAIS 


I had never quilted the lady’s hand all 
this time ; and had held it so long that it 
would have been indecent to have let it 
go, without first pressing it to my lips : the 
blood and spirits, which had suffered a 
revulsion from her, crowded back to her 
as I did it. 

Now the two travellers, who had spoke to me in the 
coach-yard, happened at that crisis to be passing by, and, 
observing our communications, naturally took it into their heads 
that we must be man and wife at least; so, stopping as soon 
as they came up to the door of the remise, the one of them, 
who was the Inquisitive Traveller, asked ms if we set out for 
Paris the next morning? 1 could on Ij " answer for mvsolf. 



— c 36 >- 


I said ; — and the lady added, she was for Amiens. We dined 

there yesterday, said the Simple Traveller. You go directly 

through the town, added the other, in your road to Paris. 

1 was going to return a thousand thanks for the intelligence 

that Amiens was in the road to Paris ; but, upon pulling out 
my poor monk’s little horn-box to take a pinch of snuff, I made 
them a quiet bow, and wished them a good passage to Dover. 
— They left us alone. 

— Now where would be the harm, said I to myself, if I was 
to beg of this distressed lady to accept of half of my chaise? — 
and what mighty mischief could ensue? 

Every dirty passion and bad propensity in my nature look 
the alarm as I stated the proposition : — It will oblige you lo 
have a third horse, said Avarice , which will put twenty livres 

out of your pocket. You know not what she is, said Caution ; 

or what scrapes the affair may draw you into, whisper’d 
Cowardice. 

— Depend upon it, Yorick, said Discretion , ’twill be said 
you went off with a mistress; and came, by assignation, to 
Calais for that purpose. 

— You can never after, cried Hypocrisy , aloud, shew your 
face in the world ; — nor rise, quoth Meanness , in the church ; 
— nor be anything in it, said Pride. ; but a lousy prebendary. 

But ’lis a civil thing, said I ; — and as I generally act from 
the first impulse, and therefore seldom listen lo these cabals, 
which serve no purpose that I know of but to encompass the 
heart with adamant, — I turn’d instantly about to the lady. 

But she had glided off unperceived, as the cause was 
pleading, and had made ten or a dozen paces down the street 
by the lime I had made the determination ; so 1 set off after her 
with a long stride, to make her the proposal with the best 
address I was master of ; but observing she walk’d with her 
check half resting upon the palm of her hand, with the 


< 37 > 


slow, short-measured step of thoughtfulness, and with her 
eyes, as she went step by step, fixed upon the ground, it 

struck me she was trying the same cause herself. God help 

her! said I, she has some mother-in-law, or tartufish aunt, or 
nonsensical old woman, to consult upon the occasion, as well 
as myself; so, not caring to interrupt the process, and deeming 
it more gallant to take her at discretion than surprise, I faced 
about, and look a short turn or two before the door of the 
remise, whilst she walked musing on one side. 




IN THE STREET 

CALAIS 

Having, on Ihe first sight of the lady, settled 
the affair in my fancy, that she was of the better 
order of beings; — and then laid it down as a 
second axiom, as indisputable as the first, that 
she was a widow, and wore a character of 
distress, — I went no further; I got ground enough 
for the situation which pleased me ; and had she 
remained close beside my elbow till midnight, I 
should have held true to my system, and con- 
sidered her only under that general idea. 

She had scarce got twenty paces distant from me, ere 
something within me called out for a more particular inquiry ; — 
it brought on the idea of a further separation : — I might possibly 
never see her more: the heart is for saving what it can ; and 



-< 39 »- 


I wauled the traces through which my wishes might find their 
way to her, in case I should never rejoin her myself. In a word, 
I wished to know her name, — her family, — her condition; — and, 
as 1 knew t he place to which she was going, I wanted to know' 
whence she came; but there was no coming at all this in- 
telligence ; a hundred little delicacies stood in the way. I formed 
a score different plans. — There was no such thing as a man’s 
asking her directly; — the thing was impossible. 

A little French debonnaire captain, who came dancing down 
the street, showed me it was the easiest thing 
in the world; — for popping in betwixt us, 
just as the lady was returning back to the 
door of the remise, he introduced himself to 
my acquaintance, and, before he had well 
got announced, begg’d 1 would do him the 
honour to present him to the lady. — I had 
not been presented myself; — so, turning about 
to her, ho did it just as well, by asking her 

if she had come from Paris? No : she 

was going that route, she said. Vous n’etes 

pas de Londres? She was not, she replied. 

Then Madame must have come through Flanders. Appa- 

rcmmcnt vous ctes Flamande? said the French captain. 

The lady answered, she was. Peut-etre de Lisle ? added 

he. She answered, she w f as not of Lisle. Nor Arras? — 

nor Cambray? — nor Ghent? — nor Brussels? She answered 

she was of Brussels. Me had the honour,, he said, to be 

at the bombardment of it last war; — that it was finely situated, 
pour ccla , — and full of noblesse when the Imperialists were 
driven out by the French (the lady made a slight curtsey) • — 
so giving her an account of the affair, and of the share he 
had had, in it,^— he begged the honour to know her name, 
— so made his bow. 



-c 40 


— Et Madame a son mari ? said he, looking back when 
he had made two steps, — and, without staying for an answer, 
— danced down the street. 

Had I served seven years apprenticeship to good-breeding, 
I. could not have done as much. 




THE REMISE 

CALAIS 



As the little French captain left us, 
Mons. Dessein came up with the' key of the 
remise in his hand, and forthwith let us into 
his magazine of chaises. • 

The first object which caught my eye, 
as Mons. Dessein opened the door of the 
remise, was another old tatter’d desobligeant ; 
and notwithstanding it was the exact picture 
of that which had hit my fancy so much in 
the coach-yard but an hour before, — the very 
sight of it stirfed up a disagreeable sensation 
within me now; and 1 thought ’twas a churlish beast into whose 
heart the idea could first enter to construct such a machine; nor 
had I much more charily for the man who could think of using it. 



42 >- 


l. observed the lady was as little taken with it as myself: so 
Mons. Dessein led us on to a couple cf chaises which stood 
abreast, telling us, as he recommended them, that they had been 
purchased by my Lord A. and B. to go the grand tour , but had 
gone no further than Paris; so were, in all respects, as good as 
new. They were too good ; — so I passed on to a third, which stood 

behind, and forthwith began to chaffer for the price. But 

’twill scarce hold two, said 1, opening the door and getting in. 

Have the goodness, Madam, said Mons. Dessein, offering 

his arm, to step in. The lady hesitated half a second, and 

stepped in ; and the waiter that moment beckoning to speak 
to Mons. Dessein, he shut the door of the chaise upon us. 




THE REMISE DOOR 

CALAIS 



C’est bien comique, ’tis very 
droll, said the lady, smiling, from 
the reflection that this was the 
second time we had been left 
together by a parcel of nonsensical 
contingencies, — c’est bien comique , 
said she. 

— There wants nothing, said I, 
to make it so, but the comic use 
which the gallantry ofa Frenchman 
would pul it to, — to make love the first moment, — and an offer 
of his person the second. 

— Tis their forte , replied the lady 

— It is supposed so, at least; — and how it has come to 


pass, continued I, I know not; but they have certainly goi iiio 
credit of understanding more of love, and making it belter, than 
any other nation upon earth ; but, for my own part, I think 
them arrant bunglers; and, in truth, the worst set of marksmen 
that ever tried Cupid’s patience. 

— To think of making love by sentiments! 

1 should as soon think of making a genteel suit of clothes 

out of remnants; 
— and to do it, 
— pop, — at first 
sight by decla- 
ration, — is sub- 
mitting the offer 
and themselves 
with it, to be 
sifted with all 
their pours and 
contres , by an 
unhealed mind. 

The lady at- 
tended as if 
she expected I 
should go on. 

— Consider then, Madam, continued I, laying my hand 
upon hers, — 

That grave people hate Love for the name’s sake, — 

That selfish people hale it for their own, — 

Hypocrites for Heaven’s, — 

And that all of us, both old and young, being ten times 
worse frightened than hurl by the very report 

What a want of knowledge in this branch of commerce a 
man betrays who ever lets the word come out of his lips till an 
hour or two at least after the time that his silence upon it 



-c 45 >- 


becomes tormenting! A course of small, quiet attentions, not so 
pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as to be -misunderstood, — 
with now and then a look of kindness., and little or nothing said 
upon it, — leaves Nature for your mistress, and she fashions it 
to her mind. 

— Then 1 solemnly declare, said the lady, blushing, — you 
have been making love to me all this while. 




THE REMISE 

CALAIS 


Monsieur Dessein came back lo let 
us on l of the chaise, and acquaint the 

lady that Count de L , her brother, 

was just arrived at the hotel. Though 
1 had infinite goodwill for the lady, I 
cannot say that I rejoiced in my heart 
at the event, — and could not help 
telling her so; — for it is fatal to a 
proposal, Madam, said I, that I was going lo make to you. 

— You need not tell me what the proposal was, said she, 
laying her hand upon both mine, as she interrupted me,— a 
man, my good Sir, has seldom an offer of kindness to make to a 
woman but she has a presentiment of it some moments before. 



-C 47 >- 


— Nature arms her with it, said I, for immediate preserva- 
tion. But I think, said she, looking in my face, I had no evil 

to apprehend ; and, to deal frankly with you, had determined 

to accept it. If I had — (she slopped a moment) — 1 believe 

your goodwill would have drawn a story from me which would 
have made pity the only dangerous thing in the journey. 

In saying this, she suffered me to kiss her hand twice; and, 
with a' look of sensibility mixed with concern, she got out of the 
chaise, — and bid adieu 




IN THE STREET 

CALAIS 



I never finished a Iwelve-guinea bargain 
so expeditiously in my life. My time seemed 
heavy upon the loss of the lady ; and, 
knowing every moment of it would be as 
two, till I put myself into motion, — I ordered, 
post-horses directly, and walked towards 
the hotel. 

Lord! said I, hearing the town-clock 
strike four, and recollecting that I had been 
little more than a single hour in Calais.- — 
What a large volume of adventures may 
be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests 
his heart in everything, and who, having eyes to see what 


-c 49 


lime and chance are perpetually holding out lo him as he 
journeyelh on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his 
hands on ! 

— If this won’t turn out something, — another will, — no 
matter, — ’tis an essay upon human nature; — I get my labour for 
my pains, — ’lis^enough; — the pleasure of the experiment has 
kept my senses and the best part of my blood awake, and laid 
the gross to sleep. 

I pity the man who can 
travel from Dan to Beersheba, 
and cry, ’Tis all barren — and 
so it is : and so is all the 
world to him who will not 
cultivate the fruits it offers. 

1 declare, said I, clapping my 
hands cheerily together, that 
was 1 in a desert, I would 
find out wherewith in it to call 
forth my affections : — if T could 
not do better, I would fasten 
them upon some sweet myrtle, 
or seek some melancholy 
cypress to connect myself to; 

— I woulcj court their shade, 
and greet them kindly for their protection; I would Clif. 
my name upon them, and swear they were the loveliest 
trees throughout the desert; if their leaves withered, l would 
leach myself to mourn; — and when they rejoiced, 1 would 
rejoice along with them. 

The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne lo 
Paris, — from Paris lo Rome — and so on; — but he set out 
with the spleen and jaundice; and every object he passed 
by w^s discoloured or distorted. — He wrote an account 



CO >- 


of them; but ’twas nothing but the account of his miserable 
feelings. 

I met Smelfungys in the grand portico of the Pantheon : — 

he was just coming out of it. 'Tis nothing but a huge cock-pit * 

said he. 1 wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus of 

Medicis, replied I;— for in passing through Florence, I had 
heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse 
than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in 
nature. 

I popp’d upon Smelfungus again at Turin, in his return 
home; and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell, 
wherein he spoke of “moving accidents by flood and field, 
and of the cannibals who each other eat : the Anthropophagi.” 
— He had been flay’d alive, and bedevill’d, and used worse 
than St. Bartholomew, at every stage he had come at. 

— I’ll tell it, cried Smelfungus, to the world. You had 

belter tell it, said I, to your physician. 

Mundungus, with an immense fortune, made the whole 
tour; going from Rome to Naples, — from Naples to Venice, 
— from Venice to Vienna, — to Dresden, to Berlin, without 
one generous connection or pleasurable anecdote to tell of; 
but he had travell’d straight on, looking neither to his right 
hand nor his left, lest Love or Pity should seduce him out of his 
road. 

Peace be to them, if it is to be found; but Heaven itself, 
was it possible to get there with such tempers, would want 
objects to give it; — every gentle spirit would come flying 
upon the wings of Love to hail their arrival. — Nothing would 
the souls of Smelfungus and Mundungus hear of but fresh 
anlhems of joy, fresh raptures of love, and fresh congratulations 
of their common felicity. — I heartily pity them: they have 


• Vide S — ’a Travel* 


4 


-c 51 > 


brought up no faculties for this work: and was the happiest 
mansion in Heaven to be allotted to Smelfungus and Mun- 
dungus, they would be so far from being happy that the souls 
of Smelfungus and Mundungus would do penance there to all 
eternity. 





MONTRIUL 


I had once losl my portmanteau from 
behind my chaise, and twice got out in the 
rain, and one of the times up to the knees 
in dirt, to help the postilion to lie it. on, 
without being able to find out what was 
wanting. — Nor was it till I got to Montriul, 
upon the landlord’s asking me if I wanted 
not a servant, that it occurred to me that 
that was the very thing. 

A servant! that I do, most sadly, quoth I. Because, 

Monsieur, said the landlord, there is a clever young fellow 
who would be very proud of the honour to serve an English- 
man. But why an English one more than any other? 




< 53 > 


They are so generous, said Ihe landlord. I’ll be shot if this 

is not a livre out of my pocket, quoth 1 to myself, this very 

night. But they have wherewithal to be -so, Monsieur, 

added he. Set down one livre . more for that, quoth 1 — 

It was but last night, said the landlord, qu'un my Lord Anglois 
present oil un ecu a la Jille de chambre^ Tant pis pour Made- 

moiselle Janalohe, said I- 

Now .lanatone being the landlord’s daughter, and tho 
landlord supposing I was young in 
French, look the liberty to inform me 1 
should not have said tant pis ; . 

— but tant mieux. Tant mieux, 
toujours, Monsieur, said he, when 
there is anything to be got; — tant 

pis , when there is nothing. It 

comes to the same thing, said 1. 

Pardonne\-moi , said the landlord 

1 cannot take a titter opportunity 
to observe, once for all, that tant pis 
and tant mieux being two of the great 
hinges in French conversation, a stran- 
ger would do well to set himself right 
in the use of them, before he gels to 
Paris. 



A prompt French Marquis, at our Ambassador’s table, 

demanded of Mr. H , if he was (I the poet? No, 

said Mr. H- , mildly. Tant pis, replied the Marquis. 

— It is H the historian, said another. Tant mieux , 

said the Marquis. And Mr II , who is a man of an 

excellent heart, returned thanks for both 

When the landlord had set me right in this matter, he called 
in La Fleur, which was the name of the young man he had spoken 
of, — saying only first, that, as for his talents, he would presume 


.-■£ 54 3- 


lo sav nothing — Monsieur was the best judge what would suit 
him; but for the fidelity of La, Fleur, he would stand respon- 
sible in all he was worth. 

The landlord delivered this in a manner .which instantly set 
my mind to the business I was upon; — and La Fleur, who 
stood waiting without, in that breathless expectation which every 
son of Nature of us have felt in our turns, came in. 




MONTRIUL 



I am apt to be taken with all kinds of 
people at first sight; but never more so 
than when a poor devil comes to offer 
his service, to so poor a devil as myself; 
and, as I know this weakness, I always 
suffer my judgment to draw back some- 
thing on that "very account — and this r 
more or less, according to the mood I 
am in, and .the case ;— and, I may add, the 
gender, too, of the person I am to govern. 
When La Fleur entered the room, after every discount I 
could make for my soul, the genuine look and air of the fellow 
determined the matter at once in his favour; so I hired him first, 
— and then began to inquire what he could do. — But I shall find 




-c 50 a- 


out-hls talents, cjuolh 1, as 1 want them; — besides, a French- 
man can do everything. 

Now poor La Fleur could do nothing but beat a drum, 
and play a march or two upon the fife. I was determined 
to make his talents do : and can't say my w eakness w as ever so 
insulted by my wisdom as in the attempt. 

La Fleur had set out early in life, as gallantly as most 
Frenchmen do, with serving l or a few' years : at the end of which, 

having satisfied the sen- 
timent, and found, more- 
over, that the honour 
of beating a drum was 
likely to be its own 
reward, as it opened 
no further track of glory 
to him, — he retired a ses 
terres , and lived comme 
il plaisoit a Dieu ; — that 
is to say, upon nothing. 
— — And so, quoth 
Wisdom , you have 
hired a drummer to attend you, in this tour of yours 

through France and Italy! Psha! said 1, and do not 

one half of our gentry go with a humdrum compagnon de 
voyage the same round, and have the piper and the Devil 
and all to pay besides? When a man can extricate himself 
with an equivoque in such an unequal match, — he is not ill 

off. But you can d.o something else, La Fleur? said I 

Oh quoui! he could make spatterdashes, and could play a 

little upon the fiddle. Bravo! said Wisdom. Why I play 

a bass myself, said I; — we shall do very well. You can shave, 
and dress a wig a little, La Fleur? He had all the dispo- 
sitions in the world. It is enough for Heaven, said 1. inter- 



-< 5 7 


3- 


rupting him, — and ought to be enough for me. — So supper 
coming in, and having a frisky English spaniel on one side 
of my chair, and a French valet, with as much hilarity in his 
countenance as ever Nature painted in one, on the other — 1 
was satisfied to my heart’s content with my empire; and if 
monarchs knew what they would be at, they might be as satisfied 
as 1 was 




MONTRIUL 


As La Fleur went the whole lour of 
France and Italy with me, and will be 
often upon the stage, I must interest the 
reader a little further in his behalf, by 
saying that t had never less reason to 
repent of the impulses vvhic.h generally 
do determine .me than in regard to this 
fellow; — he was a fajthful, affectionate, 
simple soul as ever trudged after the 
heels of a philosopher; and. notwithstanding his talents' of 
drum-bdating and spatterdash-makiog, which, tl;oiugh very 
good in themselves, happened to be of no great service to me, 
yet was f hourly recompensed by the festivity oT his temper; 
v — i- supplied all defects: — I had a- constant resource in his 



■C 59 > 


looks in all difficulties and distresses of my own — (1 was going 
to have added, of his too) ; but La Fleur was out of the reach of 
everything; for whether it was hunger or thirst, or cold or 
nakedness, or watchings, or whatever stripes of ill luck La Fleur 
met with in our journeyings, there was no index in his physio- 
gnomy to point them out by, — he was eternally the same; so, if 
I am a pL 3 of a philosopher, which Satan now and then 
puts it into my head I am, — it always mortifies the pride of the 
conceit, by reflecting how much I owe to the complexional 
philosophy of this poor fellow, for shaming me into one of a 
better kind. With all this, La Fleur had a small cast of the 
coxcomb; — but he seemed, at first sight, to be more a coxcomb 
of nature than of art; and, before I had been three days in 
Paris with him, — he seemed to be no coxcomb at ’all 




MONTRIUL 


The next morning, La Fleur entering upon 
his employment, 1 delivered to him the key 
of my portmanteau, with an inventory of my 
half-a-dozen shirts, and a silk pair of breeches : 
and bid him fasten all upon the chaise, — get 
the horses put to, — and desire the landlord to 
come in with his bill. 

— C'esi un garcon de bonne fortune, said the landlord, 
pointing through the window to half-a-dozen wenches who had 
got round about La Fleur, and were most kindly taking their 
leave of him as the postilion was leading out the horses. 
La Fleur kissed all their hands round and round again, and 
thrice he wiped his eyes, and thrice he promised he would 
bring them all’ pardons from Rome. 

— The young fellow, said the landlord, is beloved by all 



< Gl 3- 


the town ; and there is scarce a corner in Montriui where the 
want of him will not be felt. He has but one misfortune in the 

world, continued he, “ He is always in love.” 1 am heartily 

glad of it, said I ; ’twill save me the trouble every night of putting 
my breeches under my head. — In saying this, I was making 
not so much La Fleur’s 6loge as my own, having been in love 
with one princess or other almost all my life, and 1 hope I shall 
go on so till I die, being firmly persuaded, that, if ever I do a 
mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion 
and another : whilst this interregnum lasts, 1 always perceive 
my heart locked up, — I can scarce find in it to give misery a 
sixpence : and therefore I always get out of it as fast as 1 can ; 
and the moment I am rekindled, I am all generosity and good- 
will again, and would do anything in the world, either for or 
with anyone, if they will but satisfy me there is no sin in it 
— But in sayingthis, — sure I am commending the passion, — 
not myself. 




A FRAGMENT 


— The town of Abdera, notwithstand- 
ing Democritus lived there, trying all the 
powers of irony and laughter to reclaim 
it, was the vilest and most profligate town 
in all Thrace. What for poisons, conspira- 
cies, and assassinations, — libels, pasquin- 
ades, and tumults, there was no going 
there by day; — ’twas worse by night. 

Now, when things were at the worst, it came to pass, that 
the Andromeda of Euripides, being represented at Abdera, the 
whole orchestra was delighted with it; but, of all the passages 
which delighted them, nothing operated more upon their imagi- 
nations than the tender strokes of nature which the poet had 
wrought up in that pathetic speech of Perseus, O Cupid , 
prince of Gods and men % etc. Every man almost spoke pure 



-c 63 > 


iambics the next day, and talked of nothing but Perseus’s 
pathetic address, — u O Cupid, prince of Gods and men!” in 
every street of Abdera, in every house, — “O Cupid! Cupid: ” 
— In every mouth, like the natural notes of some sweet melody 
which drop from it, whether it will or no, — nothing but u Cupid! 
Cupid! prince of Gods and men! ” — The fire caught, — and 
the whole city, like the heart of one man, opened itself to Love. 

No pharmacapolist could sell one grain of hellebore, — not 
a single armourer had a heart to forge one instrument of death; 
— Friendship and Virtue met together, and kissed each other in 
the street; — the golden age returned, and hung over the town 
of Abdera; — every Abderite look his oaten pipe; and every 
Abderitish woman left her purple web, and chastely sal her 
down, and listened to the song. 

— Twas only in the power, says the Fragment, of the 
God whose empire extendeth from heaven to earth, and even to 
the depths of the sea, to have done this. 




MOiNTRlUL 


When all is ready, ancl every article 
is disputed and paid for at the inn, 
unless you are a little soured by the 
adventure, there is always a matter to 
compound at the door, before y«u can 
get into your chaise, and that is with the 
sons and daughters of poverty, who sur- 
round you. Let no man say, “Let them 
go to the Devil ! " — ’tis a cruel journey to send a few miserables ; 
and they have had sufferings enow without it. I always think it 
belter to take a. few sous out in my hand; and 1 would counsel 
every gentle traveller to do so likewise; he need not be so exact 
in setting down his motives_for giving them : — they will be 
registered elsewhere. 

For my own part, there is no man gives so little as I do; for 








-c 65 >- 


few that I know have so little to give : but as this was the first 
public act of my charity in France, 1 took the more notice of it. 

— A well-a-way ! said I, — I have but eight sous in the 
world, showing them in my hand, and there are eight poor men 
and eight poor women for them. 

A poor tattered soul, without a shirt on, instantly withdrew 
his claim, by retiring two steps out of the circle, and making a 
disqualifying bow on his part. Had the whole parterre cried out, 
Place aux dames , with one voice, it would not have conveyed the 
sentiment of a deference for the sex with half the effect. 

Just Heaven ! for what wise reasons hast thou ordered it, 
that beggarv and urbanity, which are at such variance in other 
countries, should find a way to be at unity in this? 

I insisted upon presenting him with a single sous, merely 
for his politesse. 

A poor little dwarfish, brisk fellow, who stood over against 
me in the circle, pulling something first under his arm, which 
had once been a hat, took his snuff-box out of his pocket, and 
generously offered a pinch on both sides of him ■ it was a gift of 
consequence, and modestly declined. — The poor little fellow 

pressed it upon them with a nod of welcomeness. Prene\- 

en,-^prene\, said he, looking another wav; so they each look 

a pinch. Pilv thy box should ever want one, said l to myself; 

so I put a couple of sous into it, — taking a small pinch out ot his 

box to enhance their value, as I did it. He tell the weight of 

the second obligation more than of the first, — twas doing him 
an honour, — the other was only doing him a charity; — and he 
made me a bow' to the ground for it. 

— Here! said I to an old soldier with one hand, who had 
been campaigned and worn out to death in the service, — here s 
a couple of sous for thee. Vive le Roi ! said the old soldier. 

1 had then but three sous left : so 1 gave one, simply pour 

V amour de Di'eu , w hich was the footing on which it was begged. 

& 


66 a- 


— The poor woman had a dislocated hip; so it could not be 
well upon any other motive. 

Mon cher et tres charitable Monsieur. There’s no oppos- 

ing this, said I. 

My Lord Anglois! — the very sound was worth the money ; — 
so I gave my last sous for it. — But, in the eagerness of giving, I 
had overlooked a pauvre honteux , who had no one to ask a sous 
forhim, and who, 1 believe, would have perished, ere he could 
have asked one for himself; he stood by the chaise, a little without 
the circle, and wiped a tear from a face which 1 thought had 

seen better days. Good God! said I, and I have not one 

single sous left to give him. But you have a thousand ! cried 

all the powers of Nature, stirring within me; so I gave him — 
no matter what, — I am ashamed to say how much now, — and 
was ashamed to think how little then; so if the reader can form 
any conjecture of my disposition, as these two fixed points are 
given him, he may judge within a livre or two what was the 
precise sum. 

I could afford nothing for the rest, but Dieu vous benisse. 

Et le bon Dieu vous benisse encore , said the old soldier, the 

dwarf, <Scc. The pauvre honteux could say nothing, — he pulled 
out a little handkerchief, and wiped his face as he turned away; 
— and I thought he thanked me more than them all. 




THE BIDET 




Having settled all these little matters, 
I got into my post-chaise with more ease 
than ever I got into a post-chaise in my life; and 
La Fleur having got one large jack-boot on the 
far side of a little bidet,* and another on this (for 
'y I count nothing of his legs), he cantered away before 
me as happy and as perpendicular as a prince, 

— But what is happiness ! what is grandeur, 
in this painted scene of life! — A dead ass, before 
vve had got a league, put a sudden stop to La Fleur’s career; 
— his bidet would not pass by it, — a contention arose betwixt 


■* Post-horse. 


•c 68 > 


them, and the poor fellow was kicked out of his jack-boots the 
very first kick. 

La Fleur bore his fall like a French Christian, saying 
neither more *nor less upon it than Diable! so presently got 
up, and came to the charge again astride his bidet, beating 
him up to it as he would have beat his drum. 

The bidet flew from one side of the road to the other, then 
back again, then this way, — then that way, and, in short, every 
way but by the dead ass : — La Fleur insisted upon the thing, — 
and the bidet threw him. 

— What’s the matter, La Fleur, said I, with this bidet of 

thine? Monsieur , said he, cest un cheval le plus opiniatre du 

monde. Nay, if he is a conceited beast, he must go his own 

way, replied I. So La Fleur got off him, and, giving him a 

good sound lash, the bidet took me at my word, and away he 
scampered back to Montriul. Peste ! said La Fleur. 

It is not mal a propos to take notice here that, though La 
Fleur availed himself but of two different terms of exclamation 
in this encounter, — namely, Diable! and Peste! that there are, 
nevertheless, three in the French language, like the positive, 
comparative, and superlative, one or the other of which serve 
for every unexpected throw of the dice in life. 

Le Diable! which is the first and "positive degree, is gene- 
rally used in ordinary emotions of the mind, where small things 
ohly fall out contrary to your expectations, — such as, the throw- 
ing one’s doublets, — La Fleur’s being kicked off his horse, 
and so forth, — Cuckoldom, for the same reason, is always — Le 
Diable! 

But in cases where the cast has something provoking in it, 
as in that of the bidet’s running away * after leaving La Fleur 
aground in jack-boots, — His the second degree ; 

’Tis then Peste ! 

And for the third — 


-C 69 


— But here my heart is wrung with pity and fellow-feeling, 
when I reflect what miseries must have been their lot, and how 
bitterly so refined a people must have smarted to have forced 
them upon the use of it. 

— Grant me, O ye powers which touch the tongue with elo- 
quence in distress ! — whatever is my cast , grant me but decent 
words to exclaim in, and 1 will give my nature way. 

— But, as these were not to be had in France, 1 resolved to 
take every evil just as it befell me, without any exclamation at 
all. 

La Fleur, who had made no such covenant with him- 
self, followed the bidet with his eyes till it was got out of sight, 
— and then, you may imagine, if you please, with what word he 
closed. the whole affair. 

As there was no hunting down a frightened horse in jack- 
boots, there remained no alternative but taking La Fleur either 
behind the chaise or into it. 

I preferred the latter, and, in half-an-hour, we got to the 
post-house at Nampont. 






THE DEAD ASS 

NAM PONT 


— And this, said he, putting the remains of 
a crust into his wallet, — and this should have 
been thy portion, said he, hadst thou been 

alive to have shared it with me. 1 thought, 

by the accent, it had been an apostrophe to his 
child; but ’twas to his aSs, and to the very ass 
we had seen dead in the road, which had 
occasioned La Fleur’s misadventure. The man 
seemed to lament it much ; and it instantly 
brought into my mind Sancho’s lamentation for his; but he did 
it with more true touches of nature. 

The mourner was sitlu.g upon a stone bench at the door, 
with an ass’s pannel ancTiis bridle- on one side, which he look 
up from time to time, — then laid them down, — look’d at Ihem, 











-C 71 > 


and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of his 
wallet again, as if lo eat it, held it some time in his hand, — then 
laid it upon the bit of his ass’s bridle, — looked wistfully at the 
little arrangement he had made, — and then gave a sigh. 

The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him, and La. 
Fleur among the rest, whilst the horses were gelling ready: as 
1 continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see and hear over 
their heads. 

— He said he had come last from Spain, where he had 
been from the furthest borders of Franconia ; and had got so 
far on his return home when his ass died. Everyone seemed 
desirous lo know what business could have taken so old and 
poor a man so far a journey from his own home. 

— 1( had pleased Heaven, he said, to bless him with three 
sons, the t i nest lads in all Germany; but having, in one 
week, lost two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, and the 
youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of 
being bereft of them all ; and made a vow, if Heaven would 
not take him from him also, he would go, in gratitude, to 
St. Iago in Spain. 

When the mourner got thus far on his story, he slopped 
to pay Nature his tribute, — and wept bitterly. 

He said, Heaven had accepted the conditions, and that he 
had set out from his cottage with this poor creature, who 
had been a patient partner of his journey; — that it had ate the 
same bread with him all the way, and was unto him as a friend. 
Everybody who stood about heard the poor fellow with concern. 
— La Fleur offered him monej. — The mourner said he did 
not want it; it was not the value of the ass, but the loss of him. 
The ass, he said, he was assured, loved him;— and, upon this, 
he told them a long story of a mischance upon their^ passage 
over the ^Pyrenean Mountains, which had separated them from 
each other for three days, during which time the ass had sought 


-C 72 > 


him as much as he had sought the ass; and that they had 
scarce either ale or drank till they met. 

— Thou hast one comfort, friend, said at least, in the 
loss of thy poor beast, — I am sure thou hast been a merciful 

master to him. Alasf said the mourner, I thought so when 

he was alive; — but now, that he is dead, I think otherwise. — 1 
fear the weight of myself and my afflictions togeiher, have been 
too much for him, — they have shortened the poor creature’s 

days, and 1 fear I have them to answer for. Shame on the 

world! said I to myself. Did we but love each other as this poor 
soul loved his ass, — ’twould be something. 




NAM PONT 


The concern which the poor 
fellow’s story threw me into 
required some attention; the 
posti'ion paid not the least to it, 
but set off upon the pave in 
full gallop 

The thirstiest soul in the 
most sandy desert of Arabia could not have wished more for a 
cup of cold water than mine did for grave and quiet movements; 
and 1 should have had a high opinion of the postilion, had he 
but stolen oft with me in something like a pensive pace. — On 
the contrary, as the mourner finished his lamentation, the 
fellow gave an unfeeling lash to each of his beasts, and set off 
clattering like ■} thousand devils. 

I called to him as loud as I could, for Heaven’s sake to go 
slower: — and Ihe louder I called, the more unmercifully he 



10 


74 


galloped. The deuce take him and his galloping loo, said 

I, he’ll go on tearing my nerves to pieces till he has worked me 
into a foolish passion, and then he’ll go slow, that I may enjoy 
the sweets of it. 

The postilion managed the point to a miracle : by the time 
he had got to the foot of a steep hill, about half a league from 
Nampont, — he had put me out of temper with him, — and 
then with myself for being so. 

My case then required a different treatment; and a good 
rattling gallop would have been of real service to me. 

— Then, prithee, get on, — get on, my good lad, said I. 

— The postilion pointed to the hill. 1 then tried to 

return to the story of the poor German and his ass; — 
but I had broke the clue, — and could no more get into it 
again than the postilion could into a trot. 

— The deuce go, said I, with it all! Here am 1, silling as 
candidly disposed to make the best of the worst as ever wight 
was, and all runs counter. 

There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which Nature 
holds out to us : so I look it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep; 
and the first word which- roused me was — Amiens. 

— Bless me! said I, rubbing my eyes, — this is the very 
town where my poor lady is to come. 




AMIENS 



The words were scarce out of my mouthy 

when the Count de L ’s post-chaise, with his 

sister in it, drove hastily by; she had just time to 
make me a bow of recognition, — and of that 
particular kind of it which told me she had not 
yet done with me. She was as good as her look; 
for, before 1 quite finished my supper, her 
brother’s servant came into the room with a 
billet, in which she said she had taken the 
liberty to charge me with a letter, which I was 

to present myself to Madame R the first morning I had 

nothing to do at Paris. — There was only added, she was sorry, 
but from what penchant she had not considered, that she had 
been prevented telling me her story, — that she still owed it 
to me; and if my route should overlay through Brussels, and 


-C 76 >- 


I had not by then forgot the name of Madame de L , that 

Madame de L would be glad to discharge the obligation. 

— Then I will meet thee, said 1, fair spirit! at Brussels; 
— Tis only returning from Italy, through Germany to Holland, 
by the route of Flanders, home; — Twill scarce be ten posts 
out of mv way ; but were it ten thousand! with what a moral 
delight will it, crown my journey, in sharing in the sickening 
incidents of a tale of misery told to me by such a sufferer! To 
sec her weep, and, though I cannot dry up the fountain of her 
tears, what an exquisite sensation is there still left in wiping 
them away from off the cheeks of the first and fairest of women, 
as Fm sitting with mv handkerchief in my hand in silence the 
whole night beside her! 

There was nothing wrong in the sentiment; and yet l 
instantly reproached my heart with it in the bitterest and most 
reprobate of expressions. 

It had ever, as l told the reader, been one of the singular 
blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in 
love with some one : and my last flame happening to be blown 
out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, 1 had 
lighted it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three 
months before, — swearing, as l did it, that it should last me 
through the whole journey. — Why should 1 dissemble the 
matter? I had sworn to her eternal fidelity; — she had a right 
to my whole heart: — to divide my affections was to lessen 
them; — to expose them, was to risk them; where there is 
risk, there may be loss : — and what wilt thou have, Yorick, to 
answer to a heart so full of trust and confidence, — so good, 
so gentle, and unreproaching? 

— 1 will not go to Brussels, replied I, interrupting my- 
self; — but my imagination went on, — 1 recalled her looks at 
that crisis of our separation, when neither of us had power to 
say adieu! 1 looked at the picture she had tied in a black 


•-c 77 5- 


riband about my neck, — and blushed as I looked at it. — I would 
have given the world to have kissed it, — but was'ashamed; 
anti shall this lender flower, said I, pressing it between my 
hands, — shall it be smitten to its very root, — and smitten, 
Yorick! by thee, who hast promised to shelter it in thy breast? 

Eternal Fountain of Happiness! said I,, kneeling down 
upon the ground. — be thou my witness, — and every pure 
spirit which tastes it, be my witness- also, that I would not 
travel to Brussels, unless Eliza went along with me, did the 
road lead me towards Heaven! 

hi transports of 'this kind, the heart, in spite of the under- 
standing, will always say too much. 




THE LETTER 

AMIENS 


Fortune had not smiled upon La Fleur; 
for he had been unsuccessful in his feats 
of chivalry, — and not one thing had offered 
to signalize his zeal for my service from 
the time he had entered into it, which was 
almost four-and-twenty hours. The poor 
soul burned with impatience; and the 

Count de L ’s servant coming with the 

letter, being the first practicable occasion 
which offered, La Fleur had laid hold of it, and, in order lo 
do honour to his master, had taken him into a back-parlour 
in thf auberge , and treated him with a cup or two oC.the best 
in Picardy; and Ihe Count de L ’s servant, in return, 

A 


































-c 79 •:>- 


not to be behindhand in politeness with La Fleur, had 
taken him back with him to the Count’s hotel. La Fleur’s preve- 
nancy (for there was a passport in his very looks) soon set every 
servant in the kitchen alease with him; and, as a Frenchman* 
whatever be his talents, has no sort of prudery in showing them. 
La Fleur, in less than five minutes, had pulled out his fife, and, 
leading off the dance himself with the first note, set the Jille de 
chambre , the maitre d’ hotel, the cook, the scullion, and all the 
household* dogs and cats, besides an old monkey, a-dancing! 
I suppose there never was a merrier kitchen since the flood. 

Madame de L , in passing from her brother’s apartments 

to her own, hearing so much jollity below stairs, rung up her 
Jille de chambre to ask about it; and hearing it was the English 
gentleman’s servant who had set the whole house merry 
with his pipe, she ordered him up. 

As the poor fellow could not present himself empty, he had 
loaded himself, in going upstairs, with a thousand compliments 

to Madame de L , on the part of his master; added a long 

apocrypha of inquiries after Madame de L ’s health, told 

her that Monsieur his master was au desespoir for her re- 
establishment from the fatigues of her journey ; — and, to close 
all, that Monsieur had received the letter which Madame had 

done him the honour And he has done me the honour, 

said Madame de L , interrupting La Fleur, to send a 

billot in return. 

Madame de L had said this with such a tone of reliance 

upon the fact, that La Fleur had not power to disappoint her 
expectations; — he trembled for my honour — and., possibly, 
might not altogether be unconcerned for his own, as a man 
capable of being attached to a master who could be wanting 

en egards vis-d-vis d’une femme! so that, whe n Madame de L 

asked La Fleur if he had brought a letter, — O qu’oui! said 
La Fleur; so, laying down his hat upon the ground, and 


— c 80 


taking hold of the flap of his right side-pocket with his left 
hand, he began to search for the letter with his right; — then 
contrariwise; — Diable ! — then sought every pocket, pocket 
by pocket, round, not forgetting his fob; — Peste! — then La Fleur 
emptied them upon the floor, pulled out a dirty cravat, — a 
handkerchief, — a comb, — a whip-lash, — a night-cap, — then 
gave a peep into his hat — Quelle etourderie /'He had left the 
letter upon the table in the auberge; — he would run for it, and 
be back with it in three minutes. 

1 had just finished my supper when La Fleur came in to 
give me an account of his adventure; he told the whole story 
simply as it was; and only added that, if Monsieur had forgot 
(par hasard) to answer Madame’s letter, the arrangement gave 
him an opportunity to recover the faux pas; — and if not, that 
things were onlv as thev were. 

Now, 1 was not altogether sure of my etiquette , whether I 
ought to have wrote or no; — but if I had, — a devil himself 
could not have been angry : ’twas but the officious zeal of a 
well-meaning creature for my honour; and however he might 
have mistook the road, or embarrassed me in so doing, — his 
heart was in no fault, — 1 was under no necessity to write; 
— and, what weighed more than all. — he did not look as if 
he had done amiss. 

— Tis all very well, La Fleur, said 1 Twas sufficient. 

La Fleur flew out of the room like lightning, anxl returned 
with pen, ink, and paper, in his hand; and, coming up to the 
table, laid them close before me, with such a delight in his 
countenance, that 1 could not help taking up the pen. 

I began, and began again ^and, though 1 had nothing to say, 
and that nothing might have been expressed in half-a-dozen 
lines, 1 made half-a-dozen different beginnings, and could no 
way please myself. 

In short, 1 was in no mood to write. 


-c 81 >* 


La Fleur stepp’d out and brought a little water in a glass 
to dilute my ink — then fetched sand and sealing wax. — It 
was all one ; I wrote, and blotted, and tore off, and burnt, and 
wrote again . — Le diable I’emporte, said I, half to myself, — I 
cannot write this selfsame letter, throwing the pen down 
despairingly as I said it. 

As soon as I had cast down my pen, La Fleur advanced 
with the most respectful carriage up to the table, and making 
a thousand apologies for the liberty he was going to take, told 
me he had a letter in his pocket, wrote by a drummer in his 
regiment to a corporal’s wife, which, he durst say, would suit 
the occasion. 

I had a mind to let the poor fellow have his humour. 

Then prithee, said I, let me see it. 

I a Fleur instantly pulled out a little dirty pocket-book, 
cramm’d full of small letters and billets doux in a sad condi- 
tion, and laying it upon the table, and then untying the string 
which held them all together, ran them over, one by one, till 

he came to the letter in question. Lavoila! said he, clapping 

his hands ; so, unfolding it first, he laid it before me, and 
retired three steps from the table whilst I read it. 




THE LETTER 


Madame. — Je suis penetre de la 
douleur la plus vive, et reduit en m6me 
temps au desespoir par ce retour im- 
prevu du Corporal, qui rend notre 
entrevue de ce soir la chose du monde 
la plus impossible. 

Mais vive la joie! et toute la mienne 
sera de penser A vous. 

L'amour n’est rien sans sentiment. 

Et le sentiment est encore moins sans amour. 

On dit qu’on ne doit jamais se desesperer. 

On dit aussi que Monsieur le Corporal monte la garde 
mercredi : alors, ce sei*a mon tour. 

Chacuti a son tour. 

En attendant, — Vive I’amour! et vive la bagatelle! 




-c 83 s- 


Je suis, Madame, avec tous les sentiments lesplus respec- 
tueux et les plus tendres, tout a vous, 

Jaques Roque 

It was but changing the Corporal into the Count — and 
saying nothing about mounting guard on Wednesday, — and 
the letter was neither right nor wrong; — so, lo gratify the 
poor fellow, who stood Ircmbling for my honour, his own, and 
the honour of his letter, — I took the cream gently off it, — 
and, whipping it up in my own way, — seal’d it up, and sent 

it to Madame de L ; and the next morning we pursued our 

journey to Paris 




PARIS 


When a man can contest the point 
by dint of equipage, and carry on all 
floundering before him with half-a- 
dozen lacqueys and a couple of cooks, 
— ’tisyery well in such a place as Paris, 
— he may drive in at which end of a 
street he will. 

A poor prince, who is weak in 
cavalry, and whose whole infantry 
does not exceed a’ single man, had jDest quit the field, and 
signalize himself in the cabinet, if he can get up into it. — 
1 say up into it , — for there is no descending perpendicularly 
amongst 'em with a ‘ ‘ Me' void, mes enfans — here I am, — 
whatever many may think. 

I own, my first sensations, as soon as I was left solitary 



-c 85 > 


and alone in my own chamber in the hotel, were far from being 
so flattering as I had prefigured them. I walked up gravely to 
the window in my dusty black coat, and, looking through the 
glass, saw all the world in yellow, blue, and green, running at 
the ring of pleasure. — The old with broken lances, and in 
helmets which had lost their vizards; — the young, in armour 
bright, which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather 
of the east, — all, — all, — lilting it like fascinated knights- in 
tournaments of yore, for fame and love. 

— Alas, poor Yorick! cried I, what art thou doing here? 
On the very first onset of all this glittering clatter, thou art 
reduced to an atom; — seek — seek some winding alley, with 
a tourniquet at the e‘nd of it, where chariot never rolled, nor 
flambeau shot its rays; — there thou mayest solace thy soul in 
converse sweet with some kind grisette of a barber’s wife, and 
get into such coteries! — 

— May 1 perish! if 1 do, said I, pulling out a letter which 

I had to present to Madame de R . I’ll wail upon this 

lady the very first thing I do. So l called La Fleur to go seek 
me a barber directly, — and come back and brush my coat. 




THE WIG 

PARIS 



When the. barber came, he ab- 
solutely refused to have anything 
to do with my wig; ’twas either 
above or below his art : I had 
nothing to do but to take one ready 
made of his own recommendation. 
— But I fear, friend, said I, this 

buckle won’t stand. You may 

immerse it, .replied he, into the 
ocean, and it will stand. 

What a great scale is every- 
thing upon in this city I thought I. — The utmost stretch of an 
English periwig-maker’s ideas could have gone no further than 


-C 87 > 


to have “dipped it into a pail of water.” — What difference! 
’tis like time to eternity! 

I confess I do hate all conceptions as I do the puny 
ideas which engender them ; and am generally so struck with 
the great works of Nature that, for my own part, if I could 
help it, I never would make a comparison less than a mountain 
at least. All that can be said against the French sublime, in this 
instance of it, is this : — That 
the grandeur is more in the 
word, and less in the thing. No 
doubt the ocean fills the mind 
with vast ideas; but Paris 
being so far inland, it was not 
likely I should run post a hun- 
dred miles out of it to try the 
experiment : — the Parisian bar- 
ber meant nothing. 

The pail of water standing 
beside the great deep makes 
certainly but a sorry figure in 
speech; — but ’twill be said, — 
it has one advantage — ’tis in 
the next room, and the truth 
of the buckle may be tried in' it, without more ado, in a single 
moment. 

In honest truth, and upon a more candid revision of the 
matter, the French expression professes more than it performs. 

I think I can see the precise and distinguishing marks of 
national character more in these nonsensical miniitice , than in 
the most important matters of state; where great men of all 
nations talk, and -talk so much alike, that I would not give nine- 
pence to choose among them. 

1 was so long, ia getting from under my barber’s hands. 



-C 88 3- 


Ihat it was too late to think of going with my letter to Ma- 
dame R that night: but when a man is once dressed at 

all points for going out, his reflections turn to little account; so, 
taking down the name of the Hotel de Modene, where 1 lodged, 
I walked forth, without the determination where to go to; — 1 
shall consider of that, said I, as I walk along. 




THE PULSE 

PARIS 


Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of 
life, for smooth do ye make the road 
of it; like grace and beauty, which 
beget inclinations to love at first sight: 
’tis ye who open this door, and let 
the stranger in. 

— Pray, Madame, said I, have the 
goodness to tell me which way I must 
turn to go to the Opera-Comique. 
—Most willingly, Monsieur, said she, laying aside her work. 
I had given a cast with my eye into half-a-dozen shops as 
I came along, in search of a face not likely to be disordered by 
such an interruption; till, at last, this hitting my fahcy, I .had 
walked in. 



< 90 > 


She was working a pair of ruffles as she sat on a low chair 
on the far side of the shop facing the door. 

— Tres volontiers; most willingly, said she, laying her 
work down upon a chair next her, and rising up from the low 
chair she was sitting in, with so cheerful a movement and so 
cheerful a look, that, had I been laying out fifty Louis d’or 
with her, I should have said — “This woman is grateful.” 

You must turn, Monsieur, said she, going with me to the 
door of the shop, and pointing 
the way down the street I was 
to take, — you must turn first 
to your left hand , — mais pre- 


ne{ garde , — there are two 
turns; and be so good as to Ll | 
take the second, — then go 
down a little way, and you’ll 
see a church, and when you ,!>■ 

are past it, give yourself the trouble 
to turn directly to the right, and that 
will lead you to the foot of the Pont- 
Neuf \ which you must cross, and there any one will do 
himself the pleasure to show you. 

She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with 
the same good-natured patience the third time as the first ; — 
and if tones and manners have a meaning, which certainly they 
have, unless to hearts which shut them out, — she seemed 
really interested that I should not lose myself. 

I will not suppose it was the woman’s beauty, notwith- 
standing she was the handsomest grisette , I. think, 1 ever saw, 
which had much to do with the sense I had of her courtesy; 
only I remember, when I told her how much l was obliged to 
her, that 1 looked very full in her eyes, — and that I repeated 
my thanks as, often as she had done her instructions. 





























































-c 91 > 


I had not got ten paces from the door, before I found I had 
forgot every tittle of what she had said : — so looking back, 
and seeing her still standing in the door of her shop, as if to 
look whether I went right or not,: — I returned back, to ask her 
whether the first turn was to my right or left, for that I had 

absolutely forgot. Is it possible? said she, half laughing. 

’Tis very possible, replied I, when a man is thinking more 

of a woman than of her good advice. 

As this was the real truth, she took it, as every woman 
takes a matter of right, with a slight curtsey. 

— Attendee, said she, laying her hand upon my arm to 
detain me, whilst she called a lad out of the back shop to get 
ready a parcel of gloves. I am just going to send him, said she, 
with a packet into that quarter; and if you will have the com- 
plaisance to step in, it will be ready in a moment, and he shall 
attend you to the place. So I walked in with her to the far side 
of the shop; and taking up (he ruffle in my hands*which she 
laid upon the chair, as if I had a mind to sit, she sat down 
herself in her low chair, and I instantly set myself dow r n beside 
her. 

— He will be ready, Monsieur, said she, in a moment. 

And in that moment, replied I, most willingly would I say 
something very civil to you for all these courtesies. Any one 
may do a casual act of good nature, but a continuation of them 
shows it is a part of the temperature; and, certainly, added I, 
if it is the same blood which comes from the heart, which 
descends to the extremes (touching her wrist) I am sure you 
must have one of the best pulses of any woman in the world. 

Feel it, said she, holding out her arm. So laying down my 

hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied the 
two forefingers of my other to the artery. 

Would to Heaven ! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst passed 
by, and beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my lacka- 


< 92 > 


daisical manner, counting the throbs of it, one by one, with as 
much true devotion as if I had been watching the critical ebb 
or flow of her fever! How wouldst thou have laughed and 
moralized upon my new profession ! — and thou shouldst have 
laughed and moralized on. — Trust me, my dear Eugenius, I 
should have said, ‘‘there are worse occupations in this world 

than feeling a woman' s pulse." But a grisette’s! thou wouldst 

have said, — and in an open shop, Yorick! 

— So much the better : for when my views are direct, 
Eugenius, I care not if all the world saw me feel it. 




THE HUSBAND 

PARIS 



I jhad counted twenty pul- 
sations, and was going on fast 
towards the fortieth, when her 
husband, coming unexpectedly 
from a back-parlour into the 
shop, put me a little out in my 

reckoning. ’Twas nobody 

but her husband, she said — 

so I began a fresh score.. Monsieur is so good, quoth 

she, as he passed by us, as to give himself the trouble 

of feeling my pulse. The husband took off his hat,- and, 

making me a bow, said, I did him too much honour; and 
having said that, he put on his hat and walked out. 


-C 94 3- 


Good God! said I to myself, as he went out,— and can 
this man be the husband of this woman? 

Let it not torment the few who know what must have been 
the grounds of this exclamation, if I explain it to those who 
do not. 

In London, a shopkeeper and a shopkeeper's wife seem to 
be one bone and one flesh. In the several endowments of mind 
and body, sometimes the one, and sometimes the other has 
it, so as in general to be upon a par, and to tally with each 

other as nearly as a man 
and wife need to do. 

In Paris, there are 
scarce two orders of 
beings more different; for 
the legislative and exe- 
cutive powers of the shop 
not resting in the hus- 
band, he seldom comes 
there : — in some dark and 
dismal room behind, he 
sits commerceless in his 
thrum night-cap, the same 
rough son of Nature that Nature left him. 

The genius of a people where nothing but the monarchy is 
salique having ceded this department, with sundry others, 
totally to the women — by a continual higgling with customers 
of all ranks and sizes from morning to night, like so many 
rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable col- 
lisions, they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, 
and not only become round and smooth, but will receive, some 
of them, a polish like a brilliant — Monsieur le Mari is little 
better than the stone under your foot. 

— Surely, — surely, man ! it is not good for thee to sit 



-c 95 >- 


alone, thou wast made for social intercourse and gentle greet- 
ings; and this improvement of our natures from it, I appeal to, 
as my evidence. 

— And how does it beat, Monsieur? said she. With 

all the benignity, said 1, looking quietly in her eyes, that 1 

expected. She was going to say something civil in return, 

but the lad came into the shop with the gloves . — A propos ; 
said I, 1 want a couple of pairs myself. 




THE GLOVES 


PARIS 


nol 

the 


The beautiful grisette rose up when f 
A') said this, and, going behind the counter, 


reached down a parcel, and untied it : I 
advanced to the side over-against 'her : they 
were all too large. The beautiful grisette 
measured them one by one across my hand, 
— it would not alter the dimensions. — She 
begged I would try a single^ pair, which 
seemed to be the least. — She held it open; 
— my hand slipped into it at once. — It will 
do, said I, shaking my head a little.— No, said she, doirfg^ 
same thing. 

There are certain combined looks of simple subtlety, — 
here whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense. 



-c 97 


are so blended, that all the languages of Babel let loose 
together, could not express them — they are communicated and 
caught so instantaneously that you can scarce say which party 
is the infector. I leave it to your men of words to swell pages 
about it, — it is enough in the present to say, again, the gloves 
would not do; so, folding our hands within our arms, we both 
loll’d upon the_ counter ; — it was narrow, and there was just 
room for the parcel to lay between us. 

The beautiful grisette looked sometimes at the gloves, — 
then sideways to the window, then at the gloves, — and then at 

me. I was not disposed to 

break silence; — I followed her 

example; sol looked at the gloves, 
to the window, then at 
the gloves, and then 
at her — and so on 

alter : nately. 

1 found 1 lost 

considerably in every 
attack : — she had a 
quick black eye, and 
shot through two such long and silken eyelashes with such 
penetration that she looked into my very heart and veins. — 
It may seem strange; but I could actually feel she did. 

— It is no matter, said I, taking up a couple of the pairs 
next me, and putting them into my pocket. 

1 was sensible the beautiful grisette had not asked a single 
livre above the price. I wished she had asked a livre more; 

and was puzzling my brains how to bring the matter about. 

Do you think, my dear sir, said she, mistaking my embarrass- 
ment, that 1 could ask a sous too much of a stranger — and of 
a stranger whose politeness, more than his want of gloves, has 
done me the honour to lay himself at my mercy? — M'e:i 



13 


-C 98 > 


croye^-vous capable? — Faith! not I, said I ; and if you were* 
you are welcome. So, counting the money into her hand, and 
with a lower bow than one generally makes to a shopkeeper’s 
wife, 1 went out; and her lad with his parcel followed me. 




THE TRANSLATION 

PARIS 

♦ 

There was nobody in the box I 
was let into, but a kindly old French 
officer. I love the character, not only 
because I honour the man whose 
manners are softened by a profession 
which makes bad men worse, but that 
I once knew one — for he is no more, — and why should I not 


rescue one page from violation by writing his name in it, and 
telling the world it was Captain Tobias Shandy, the dearest 
of my flock and friends, whose philanthropy I never think of 
at this long distance from his death, but my eyes gush out 


) > 3 


-c 100 > 


with tears. For his sake, I have a predilection for the whole 
corps of veterans; and so I strode over the two back rows of 
benches, and placed myself beside him. 

The old officer was reading- allentively a small pamphlet 
(it might be the book of the opera) with a large pair of spec- 
tacles. As soon as 1 sat down, he look his Spectacles off, and, 
putting them into a shagreen case, returned them and the 
book into his pocket together. 1 half rose up, and made him a 
bow. 

Translate this into any civilized language in the world, the 
sense is this : — 

“ Here’s a poor stranger 
come into the box; he seems 
as if he knew nobody : and 
is never likely, was he to be 
seven years in Paris, if every 
man he comes near keeps, 
his spectacles upon his nose : 

— ’tis shutting the door of 
conversation absolutely in his 
face, and using him worse 
than a German. ” 

The French officer might as well have said it all aloud : 
and if he had, I should in course have put the bow I made 
him into French too, and told him, “I was sensible of his 
attention, and returned him a thousand thanks for it. 

There is not a secret so aiding to the progress of sociality 
as to get master of this short han d, and to be quick in rendering 
the several turns of looks and limbs, with all their inflections 
and delineations, into plain words. For my own part, by long 
habitude, 1 do it so mechanically that, when I walk the streets 
of London, I go translating all the way; and have more than 
once stood behind the circle, where not three words have been 



-c 101 >- 


said, and have brought off twenty different dialogues with me, 
which I could have fairly wrote down and sworn to. 

1 was going one evening to Martini’s concert at Milan, and 
was just entering the door of the hall, when the Marquisina 

de F was coming out, in a sort of hurry; — she was 

almost upon me before 1 saw her: so I gave a spring to one 
side to let her pass. She had done the same, and on the same, 
side, too : so we ran our heads together : she instantly got to 
the other side to get out : 1 was just as unfortunate as she had 
been; for 1 had sprung to that side, and opposed her passage 
again. We both flew together to the other side, and then back, 
— and so on : — it was ridiculous : we both blushed intoler- 
ably; so I did at last the thing I should have done at first; — 

I stood slock still, and the Marquisina had no more difficulty. 

I had no power to go into the room till I had made her so 
much reparation as to wait anti follow her with my eye to the 
end of the passage. She looked back twice, and walked along 
it rather sideways, as if she would make room for any one 
coming upstairs to pass her. No, saitl I, that’s a vile trans- 

lation ; the Marquisina has a right to the best apology I can 
make her; and that opening is left for me to do it in : — so 1 
ran and begged pardon for the embarrassment 1 had given her, 
saying it was my intention to have made her way. Sheanswered, 
she was guided by the same intention towards me; — so we 
reciprocally thanked each other. She was at the top of the 
stairs; and seeing no cicisbeo near her, I begged to hand her 
to her coach; so we went down the stairs, stopping at every 

third step to talk of the concert and the adventure. Upon my 

word, Madam, said I, when I had handed her in, I made six 

different efforts to let you go out. And I made six efforts, 

replied she, to let you enter. 1 wish to Heaven you would 

make a seventh, said I. With all my heart, said she, making 

room. — Life is too short to be long about the forms of it.— 


-c 102 >- 


so 1 instantly stepped in, and she carried me home with her. 
And what became of the concert? St. Cecilia, who, T sup- 
pose, was at it, knows more than I. 

I will only add, that the connection, which arose out of the 
translation, gave me more pleasure than any one 'I had the 
honour to make in Italy. 




PARIS 


1 had never heard the remark made by 

£ ^ 

any one in mv life, except by one; and who 
that was, will probably come out in this 
chapter; so that, being pretty much unpre- 
possessed, there must have been grounds 
for what struck me the moment 1 cast my 
eyes over the parterre , — and that was, the 
unaccountable sport of Nature in forming 
such numbers of dwarfs. No doubt, she sports at certain times 
in almost every corner of the world : but in Paris there is no 
end to her amusements. — The goddess seems almost as merry 
as she is wise. 



-C 104 >- 


As I carried my idea oul of the Opera-Comique with me, I 
measured everybody 1 saw walking in the streets by it. — Melan- 
choly application! especially where the size was extremely 
little. — the face extremely dark, — the eyes quick, — the nose 
long. — the teeth white, — the jaw prominent,— to see so many 
miserables, by force of accidents, driven oul of their own 
proper class into the very verge of another, which it gives me 
pain to write down : — every third man a pigmy; — some by 
rickety heads and humpbacks; — others by bandy-legs; — a 
third set arrested by the hand of Nature in the sixth and seventh 
years of their growth ; — a fourth, in their perfect and natural 
stale, like dwarf apple-trees; from the first rudiments and 
stamina of their existence, never meant to grow higher. 

A Medical Traveller might say ’tis owing to undue 
bandages; — a Splenetic one, to want of air; — and an Inqui- 
sitive Traveller, to fortify the system, may measure the height 
of their houses. — the narrowness of their streets, and in how 
few feel square in the sixth and seventh stories such numbers 
of the Bourgeoisie eat and sleep together. But I remember, 
Mr. Shandy the Elder, who accounted for nothing like anybody 
else, in speaking one evening of these matters, averred, that 
children, like other animals, might be increased almost to any 
size, provided they came right into the world; but the misery 
was, the citizens of Paris were so coop'd up, that they had not 

actually room enough to get them. -I do not call it getting 

anything, said he; — 'tis getting nothing Nay, continued he, 

rising in his argument, "tis getting worse than nothing, when 
all you have got, after twenty or five-and-twenly years of the 
lenderesl care and most nutritious aliment bestowed upon it, 
shall not at last be as high as my leg Now, Mr. Shandy being 
very short, there could be nothing more said of it. 

As this is not a work of reasoning, 1 leave the solution as 
I found it, and content myself with the truth only of the remark, 


i 


-c 105 >- 


which is verified in every lane and by-lane of Paris. I was 
walking down that which leads from the Carrousel to the Palais- 
Royal, and observing a little boy in some distress at the side of 
the gutter which ran down the middle of it, I took hold of his 
hand, and helped him over. Upon turning up his face to look 

at him after, I perceived he was about forty. Never mind, 

said I, some good body will do as much for me when 1 am 
ninety. 

I feel some little principles within me, which incline me 
to be merciful towards this poor 
blighted part of my species, who 
have neither size nor strength to 
get on in the world. — I cannot 
bear to see one of them trod upon ; 
and had scarce got sealed beside 
my old French officer ere the 
disgust was exercised by seeing the 
very thing happen under the box 
we sat in. 

At the end of the orcheslia, 
and betwixt that and the first 
sidebox, there is a small esplanade 
left, where, when the house is full, 
numbers of all ranks take sanctuary. Though you stand, as 
in the parterre, you pay the same price as in the orchestra. 
A poor defenceless being of this order had got thrust, 
somehow or other, into this luckless place; — the night was 
hot, and he was surrounded by beings two feet and a half 
higher than himself. The dwarf suffered inexpressibly on all 
sides; but the thing which incommoded him most, was a tall, 
corpulent German, near seven feet high, who stood directly 
betwixt him and all possibility of his seeing either the stage 
or the actors. The poor dwarf did all he could to get a peep 



-< 106 >■ 


at what was going forwards, by seeking for some little opening 
betwixt the German’s arm and his body, trying first on one 
side, then on the other; but the German stood square in 
the most unaccommodating posture that can be imagined : — 
the dwarf might as well have been placed at the bottom of the 
deepest draw-well in Paris; so he civilly reached up his hand 
to the German’s sleeve, and told him his distress. — The German 
turned his head back, looked down upon him as Goliath did 
upon David,— and unfeelingly resumed his posture. 

I was just then taking a 
pinch of snuff out of my 

monk’s little horn box. 

And how would thy meek 
and courteous spirit, my 
dear monk! so tempered 
to bear and forbear ! — how 
sweetly would it have lent 
an ear to this poor soul’s 
complaint! 

The old French officer 
seeing me lift up my eyes 
with emotion, as 1 made 
the apostrophe, took the 
liberty to ask me what was the matter — I told him the story in 
three words, and added, how inhuman it was. 

By this time the dwarf was driven to extremes, and in his 
first transports, which are generally unreasonable, had told the 
German he would cut off his long queue with his knife. — The 
German looked back coolly, and told him he was welcome, if 
he could reach it. 

An injury sharpened by an insult, be it to whom it will, 
makes every man of sentiment a party 1 could have leaped out 
of the box to- have redressed it. — The old French officer did 



-c 107 >- 


it with much less confusion ; for, leaning a little over, and 
nodding to a sentinel, and pointing at the same time, with 
his finger, at the distress, — the sentinel made his way to it. — 
There was no occasion to tell the grievance — the thing told 
itself; so, thrusting back the German instantly with his musket, 
— he took the poor dwarf by the hand, and placed him before 

him. This is noble! said I, clapping my hands together. 

And yet you would not permit this, said the old officer, in 

England. 

— In England, dear Sir, said I, tve sit all at our ease. 

The old French officer would have set me at unity with 
myself, in case I had been at variance, — by saying it was a 
bon mot; — and, as a bon mot is always worth something in 
Paris, he offered me a pinch of snuff. 




THE ROSE 


PARIS 

It was now my lurn lo ask the 
old French officer, “What was Ihc 
mailer?” for a cry of ‘‘ Hausse\ les 
mains , Monsieur /’ Abbe." re-echoed 
from a dozen different par Is of l he 
parterre , was as unintelligible lo me 
as my apostrophe lo the monk had been lo him. 

He told me it was some poor Abbe in one of the upper 
loges, who he supposed had got planted perdu behind a couple 
of grisettes, in order lo see the opera, and that the parterre 
espying him, were insisting upon his holding up both his hands 

during the representation. Ancl can it be supposed, said 

1, that an ecclesiastic would pick the grisettes' pockets? — The 



» 


lot) :>- 


old French oC('iccr smiled, and whispering in my car, opened 
a door of knowledge which I had no idea of. 

— Good God ! said I, turning pale with astonishment, — 
is it possible that a people so smit with sentiment should at 
the same lime be so unclean, and so unlike themselves. — 
Quelle grossierete ! added l. 

— The French officer told me it was an illiberal sarcasm 
at the church, which had begun in the theatre about the lime 
the Tartuffe was given in it, by. Moliere : — but, like other 

remains of Gothic mannersT was declining. Every nation, 

continued he, have their refinements and grossieretes, in which 
they take the lead, and lose it of one another by turns; — that he 
had been in most countries, but never in one but where he found 
some delicacies, which others seemed to want. Le m pour et 
le contre se trouvent en chaque nation ; there is a balance, said he, 
of good and bad everywhere; and nothing but knowing it is 
so, can emancipate one^half of the World from the preposses- 
sion which it holds against the other : — that the advantage of 
travel,. as it regarded the savoir vivre , was by seeing a great 
deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual toleration ; 
and mutual toleration, concluded he, making me a bow, taught 
us mutual love. 

The old French officer delivered this with an air of such 
candour and good sense, as coincided with my first favourable 
impressions of his character: — 1 thought I loved the man; but 
1 fear 1 mistook the object : — 'twas my own way of thinking, 
— the difference was, I could not have expressed it half so 
well. 

It is alike troublesome to both the rider and his beast, — 
if the latter goes pricking up his ears, and starting all the way 
at every object which he never saw before. — I have as little 
torment of this kind as any creature alive; and yet I honestly 
confess, that many a thing gave me pain, and that I blushed at 


-c 110 >- 


many a word the first month, — which I found inconsequent 
and perfectly innocent the second. 

Madame de Rambouliet, after an acquaintance of about six 
weeks with her, had done me the honour to take me in her 
coach about two leagues out of town. — Of all women, Madame 
de Rambouliet is the most correct : — and I never wish to see 
one of more virtues and purity of heart. — In our return back, 

Madame de Rambouliet desired me to pull the cord. 1 

asked her if she wanted anything. Rien que pour pisser, 

said Madame de Rambouliet. 

Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouliet 
p — ss on. — And, ye fair mystic nymphs, go each one pluck 
your rose , and scatter them in your path, — for Madame de 
Rambouliet did no more. — I handed Madame de Rambouliet 
out of the coach; and had I been the priest of the chaste Cas- 
talia , I could not have served at her fountain with more 
respectful decorum. 




THE F1LLE DE CHAMBRE 

PARIS 

What the old French officer had deli- 
vered upon travelling , bringing Polonius’s 
advice to his son, upon the same subject, into 
my head, — and that bringing in Hamlet, — 
and Hamlet the rest of Shakespeare’s Works, 
I stopped at the Quai de Conti, in my return 
home, to purchase the whole 'set. 

The bookseller said he had not a set in 

the world. Comment! said I, taking one 

up out of a set which lay upon the counter betwixt us. He 

said, they were, sent him only to be got bound; and were to be 

sent back to Versailles in the morning to the Count de B 

— And does the Coun! de B , said I, read Shake- 
speare? C’est un esprit J'ort, replied the bookseller. 'He 



-C 112 D- 


loves English books; and what is more to his honour, Monsieur, 

he loves the English too You speak this so civilly, said I, 

that it is enough to oblige an Englishman to lay out a Louis 

d’or or two at your shop. The bookseller made a bow, 

and was going to say something, when a young decent girl, 
about twenty, who by her air and dress seemed to be file de 
chambre to some devout woman of fashion, came into the shop 
and asked for Les Egarements du Cceur et de l’ Esprit. The book- 
seller gave her the book directly; she pulled out a little green 
satin purse, run round with a riband of the same colour, and 
pulling her finger and thumb into it, she look out the money 
and paid for it. As I had nothing more to slay me in the shop, 
we both walked out of the door together. 

— And what have you to do, my dear, said I, with The 
Wanderings of the Heart, who scarce know yet you have one? 
nor, till Love has first told you it, or some faithless shepherd 

has made it ache, canst thou ever be sure it is so. Dieu 

men garde! said the girl. With reason, said 1; for if it is a 

good one, Tis a pity it should be stolen; ’tis a little treasure to 
thee, and gives a better air to your face, than if it was dressed 
out with pearls. 

The young girl listened with a submissive attention, holding 

her satin purse by its riband in her hand all the time. ’Tis 

a very small one, said I, taking hold of the bottom of it— (she 
held it towards me) — and there is very little in it, my dear, 
said I ; but be as good as thou art handsome, and Heaven 
will fill it. I had a parcel of crowns in my hand to pay for 
Shakespeare; and ns she had let go the purse entirely, I put 
a single one in ; and tying up the riband in a bowknot, returned 
it to her. 

The young girl made me more a humble curtsey than a low 
one r- — ’twas one of those xjuiet thankful sinkings, where the 
spirit bows itself down, — the body does no more than tell it. 


#> 


-c 113 3- 


1 .*?.£' er S ave a g"'l a crown in my life which gave me half, the 
pleasure. 

My advice, my dear, would not have been worth a pin to 
you, said I, if I had not given this along with it : but now, when 
you see the crown, you’ll remember it; — so don’t, my dear, lay 
it out in ribands. 

— Upon my word, Sir, said the girl, earnestly, I am incap- 
able; — in saying which, as is usual in 
little bargains of honour, she gave me 
her hand : — En verity, Monsieur, 
je mettrai cet argent a part , said 
she. 

When a virtuous convention 
is made betwixt man and woman, 
it sanctifies their most private 
walks; so, * notwithstanding it was 
dusky, yet as both our roads 
lay the same way, we made no 
scruple of walking along the Quai 
de Conti together. She made me 
a second curtsey in setting 
off; and, before we got twenty 
T" yards from the door, as if 
r— ^ j she had not done enough 
before, she made a sort of a 
little slop, to tell me again — she thanked me. 

— It was a small tribute, I told her, which I could not avoid 
paying to virtue, and would not be mistaken in the person I had 
been rendering it to for the world; but 1 see innocence, my dear, 
in your face,— and foul befall the man who ever lays a snare in 
its way ! 

The girl seemed affected, some way or other, with what I 
said ; — she gave a low sigh ; — l found I was not empowered to 



is 


< m >- 


enquire at all after it, — so said nothing more till I got to the 
corner of the rue de Nevers, where we were to part. 

— But, is this the way, my dear, said I, to the Hotel de 
Modene?— —She told me it was;— or that I might go by the rue 
de Gueneguault, which was the next turn. — Then I’ll go, my dear, 
by the rue de Gueneguault, said I, for two reasons : first, I shall 
please myself ; and next, 1 shall give. you. the protection of my 

company as far on your way as I can. The girl was sensible 

I was civil, — and said, she wished the Hotel de Modene was in 

the rue de St.-Pierre. You .live there? said I. She told 

me she was fille de chambre to madame R Good God ! 

said I, ’its the very lady for whom I have brought a letter from 

Amiens. The girl told me that madame R , she believed, 

expected a stranger with a letter, and was impatient to see him. 

So I desired the girl to present my compliments to madame 

R , and say I would certainly wait upon her in the morning. 

We stood still at the corner of the rue de Nevers w hilst this 
passed. — We then stopped a moment whilst she disposed of her 
Egar'ements du coeur, &c., more commodiously than carrying 
them in her hand : — they were two volumes ; so I held the 
second for her whilst she put the first into her pocket ; — and 
then she held the pocket, and I put in the other after it. 

'Tis sweet to feel by what line-spun threads our affections are 
drawn together. 

We set off afresh and as she took her third step, the girl 

pul her hand within my arm. 1 was just bidding her, — but 

she did it of herself, with that undeliberaling simplicity, which 
shew ed it was out of her head that shr ad never seen me before. 
F or my own part, I felt the conviction of consanguinity so strongly', 
that 1 could not help turning half round to look in her face, and 
see if I could trace out anything in it of a family likeness.— Tut ! 
said I, are we not all relations? 

\Y hen we arrived at the turning up of the ruede Gueneguault, 


-c 115 >* 


1 slopped lo bid her adieu for good and all : the girl would lhank 
me again for my company and kindness. — She bid me adieu 
twice; — I repeated it as often ; and so cordial was the parting 
between us that, had it happened anywhere else, I'm not sure but 
I should have signed it with a kiss of charily, as warm and holy 
as an apostle. 

But in Paris, as none kiss. each other but the men, — 1 did 
what amounted to the same thing, — I bid God bless her! 






THE PASSPORT 
PARIS 


When 1 got home to my hotel, La Fleur 
told, me 1 had been .inquired after by the 

Lieutenant de Police. The deuce take it, 

said I, — l know the reason. It is time the 
reader^ should know it; for, in the order of 
things in. which it happened, it was omitted; 
not that it was out of my head, but that, had 
1. lold.it then, it might have been forgot now; — and now is the 
lime I want it 

I had left London with so much precipitation, that it never 
entered my mind that we were at war with France; and had 
reached Dover, and looked through my glass at the hills beyond 
Boulogne, before the idea presented itself ; and with this in its 
train, that there was no getting there without a passport. Go but 



-C i 17 » 


lo the end of a street, I have a mortal aversion for returning 
back no wiser than I set out; and as this was one of the greatest 
efforts I had ever made for knowledge, I could less bear the 

thoughts of it ; so hearing the Count de had hired the packet, l 

begged he would take me in his suite. The Count had some little 
knowledge of me, so made little or no difficulty, — only said, his 
inclination to serve me could reach no farther than Calais, as he 
was to return by way of Brussels lo Paris; however, when 1 had 
once passed there, I might get to Paris without interruption ; 

but that in Paris 1 must make friends and shift for myself. 

Let me get lo Paris, Monsieur le Comte, said I, — and I shall do 
very well. So I embarked, and never thought more of the matter. 

When La Fleur told me the Lieutenant de Police had been 
enquiring after me — the thing instantly recurred ; — and, by the 
lime La Fleur had well told me, the master of the hotel came 
into my room, to tell me the same thing, with this addition to it, 
that my passport had been particularly asked after : the master 

of the hotel concluded by saying he hoped I had one. Not I, 

faith ! said I. 

The master of the hotel retired three steps from me, as from 
an infected person, as I declared this; — and poor La Fleur 
advanced three steps towards me, and with that sort of move- 
ment which a good soul makes to succour a distressed one : the 
fellow won my heart by it ; and from that single trait, I knew his 
character as perfectly, and could rely on it as firmly, as if he 
had served me with fidelity for seven years. 

— Mon Seigneur ! cried the master of the hotel; — but, recollect- 
ing himself as he made the exclamation, he instantly changed the 
tone ofit— If Monsieur, said he, has not a passport (apparemment), 
in all likelihood he has friends in Paris who Can procure him 

one. Not that I know of, quoth I, with an air of indifference. 

Then certes, replied he, you’!l be sent to the Bastile, or the 

Chatelet, au moins , Poo! said 1, the King of France is a 


-C US 3- 


goocl-naturecl soul, — he'll hurt nobody. Cela n'empeche pas , 

said he, — you will certainly be sent to the Bastile to-morrow 

morning.. But I’ve taken your lodgings for a month, answered 

I ; and I’ll not quit them before the lime for all the Kings of 

France in the world. La Fleur whispered in my ear — that 

nobody could oppose the King of France. 

— Pardi, said my host, ces Messieurs Anglois sont des gem 
tres extraordinaires ; — and, having both said and sworn it, — he 
went out. 




THE PASSPORT 

THE HOTEL AT PARIS 

I could not find in my heart to 
torture La Fleur’s with a serious look 
upon the subject of my embarrassment, 
which was the reason I had treatcd. it 
so cavalierly ; and to show hirn, how 
light it lay upon my mind. I dropped 
the subject entirely: and whilst, he 
waited upon me at supper, talked to 
him with more than usual gaiety about 
Paris, and of the Opera Comique . — La Fleur had been there 
himself, and had followed me through the streets as far as the 
bookseller’s shop; but seeing me come out with the young 
Jille de chambre, and that we walked down the Quai de Conti 
together, La Fleur deemed it unnecessary io follow me a step 
further, — so making his own reflections upon it, he look a. 



shorter cut,— and got to the hotel in time to be informed of the 
affair of the police against my arrival. 

As soon as the honest creature had taken away, and gone 
down to sup himself, 1 then began lo think a little seriously 
about my situation. 

—And, here, l know, Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the 
remembrance of a short dialogue which passed betwixt us, the 
moment 1 was going to set out : — I must tell it here. 

Eugenius, know- 
ing that 1 was as 
little subject to be 
overburdened with 
money as thought, 
had drawn me aside 
to interrogate me 
how much 1 had 
taken care for. Upon 
telling him the exact 
sum,Eugeniusshook 
his head, and said it 
would not do; so 

it into mine. I’ve 

enough, in conscience, Eugenius, said I. Indeed, Yorick, you 

have not, replied Eugenius; — I know France and Italy belter 

than you. But you don’t consider, Eugenius, said I, refusing 

his offer that before I have been three days in Paris, 1 shall take 
care to say or do something or other for which I shall get clap- 
ped up into the Bastile, and that 1 shall live there a couple of 

months entirely at the King of France’s expense. 1 beg 

pardon, said Eugenius, drily: really, I had forgot that resource. 

Now r the event I treated gaily, came seriously to my door 

Is it folly, or nonchalance , or philosophy, or pertinacity;— 
or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone 



-C 121 >- 


downstairs, and 1 was quite alone, I could not bring down my 
mind to think of it otherwise ihan I had then spoken of it to 
Eugenius? 

— And as for the Bastile, — the terror is in the word. Make 

the most of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another 
word for a tower; and a tower is but another word for a 
house you can’t get out of. — Mercy on the gouty! for they are 
in it twice a year. — But with nine livres a-day, and pen and 
ink and paper and patience, albeit a man can’t get out, he may 
do very well within, — at least for a month or six weeks , at the 
end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, 
and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in. 

1 had someoccasion (I forgot what) to step into thecourtyard, 
asl settled this account; and remember I walked downstairs in 

no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. Beshrew 

the sombre pencil! said I, vaunlingly — for I envy not its power, 
which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colour- 
ing. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified 
herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and 
hue, she overlooks them. ’Tis true, said I, correcting the pro- 

position — the Bastile is not an evil to be despised. — But strip it 
of its towers — fill up the foss — unbarricade the doors — call it 
simply a confinement, and suppose ’tis some tyrant of a distem- 
per — and not of a man, which holds you in it — the evil vanishes, 
and you bear the other half without complaint. 

I was interrupted in the hey-day ofthis soliloquy, with a yoice 
which I took to be of a child, which com plained “ it could not get 
out.”— I look’d up and down the passage, and, seeing neither 
man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention. 

i In my return back through the passage, I heard the same 
words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a 

starring hung in a little cage. “ I can’t get out, — I can’t geU 

out,” said the starling. 


122 


I stood looking al the bird: and to every person who came 
through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side towards which 
they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. — 

V 1 can’t get out,” said the starling. God help thee! said I, — 

but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage 
to gel the door: it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire 
there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. 

— 1 took both hands to it. 

The bird flew to the place 
where I was attempting his 
deliverance, and, thrusting his 
head through the trellis, pres* 
sed his breast against it, as if 
impatient. 1 fear, poor crea- 

ture, said I, 1 cannot set thee 

at liberty. “No,” said the 

starling; “ l can’t get out — I 
can’t get out.” 

I vow I never had my affec- 
tions more tenderly awakened; 
nor do l remember an incident in my life where the dissipated 
spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly 
call’d home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in 
tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they 
overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and 
I heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word 1 had said, in 
going down them. 

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still Slavery, said 1,- — still thou 
art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been 
made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 

’Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing 

myself to Liberty , whom all, t >n public or in private, worship, 
whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall 



-< 123 


change. No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, norehymic 
power turn thy sceptre into iron; — with thee, to smile upon him 
as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from 
whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven ! cried I, kneel- 

ing, down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but 
health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair god- 
dess as my companion, — and shower down thy mitres, if it 
seem good unto thy Divine Providence, upon those heads 
which are aching for them ' 





THE CAPTIVE 

PARIS 


The bird in his cage pursued me 
into my room. I sat down close by my 
table, and, leaning my head upon my 
hand, 1 began to figure to myself the 
miseries of confinement. I was in a 
right frame for it, and so I gave, full 
scope to my imagination. 

1 was going to begin with the mil- 
lions of my fellow creatures born to no 
inheritance but slavery: but finding, 
however affecting the picture was, that 1 could not bring it near 
me, and that the multitude of sad groups, in it did but distract me— 
—1 look a .single captive, and, having first shut him up in his 
dungeon, 1 then looked through the twilight of his grated door 
to take his picture. 



I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation 
and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was 
which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer. I saw 
him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not 
once fanned his blood; — he had seen no sun, no moon, in all 
that time; — nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed 
through his lattice!— His children! 

But here my heart began to bleed; and 1 was forced 
to go on with another part of the 
portrait. 

He was sitting upon the ground 
upon a little straw, in the furthest 
corner of hisdungeon, 
which was alternately 
his chair and bed: a 
little calendarof small 
slicks was laid at the 
head, notched all over 
with the dismal days 
and nights he had \ 
passed there: — he 
had one of these little 
sticks in his hand, and, with a rusty nail, he was etching 
another day of misery to add to the heap. As 1 darkened the 
little ligKt he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, 
then cast it clown, — shook his head and went on with his work of 
affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his 
body to lay his little slick upon the bundle. — He gave a dee,p 

sigh.— 1 saw the iron enter into his soul !— I burst into tears. 

! could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy 
Imd drawn. — 1 started up from my chair, and calling La Fleur, 
— 1 bid him bespeak me a remise, and have it ready at the door 
of the hotel by nine in the morning. 



-C 126 


— I’ll, go directly, said I, myself to Monsieur le Due de 
Choiseul. 

La Fleur would have put me to bed ; butnot willing he should 
see anything upon my cheek which would cost the honest fel- 
low a heart-ache, I told him I would go to bed by myself — and 
bid him go do the same. 




THE STARLING 

ROAD TO VERSAILLES 


I got into my remise the hour 
I proposed, La Fleur got ^p 
behind, and I bid the coachman 
make the best of his way to Ver- 
sailles. 

As there was nothing in this 
road, or rather hothing which I look 
for in travelling, I cannot till up the 
blank belter than with a short history of this self-same bird, 
w hich became the subject of the last chapter. 

Whilst the Honourable Mr. was waiting for a wind at 

Dover, it had been caught upon the cliffs, before it could well fly, 
by an English lad who was his groom ; who, not caring to destroy 
it, had taken it in his breast into the packet; — and. by course of 



feeding it, ami taking itatonce under his protection, in a day of 
two grew fond of it, and got it safe along with him to Paris. 

At Paris, the lad had laid out a livre ina little cage for the star- 
ling ; and, as he had little to do better the five months his master 
stayed there, he taught it, in his mother’s tongue, the four simple 
words — (and no more), to which I owned myself so much its 

debtor. 

Upon his master’s going 
on for Italy, the lad had given 
it to the master of the hotel. 
But his little song for liberty 
being in an unknown lan- 
guage at Paris, the bird had 
little or no store set by him : 
—so La Fleur bought both 
him and his cage for me for 
a bottle of Burgundy. 

In my return from Italy, 

I brought him with me to the 
country in whose language he 
had learned his notes; and, 
telling the story of him to 
Lord A., Lord A. begged 
the bird of me; in -a week Lord A. gave him to Lord B; 
Lord B. made a present of him to Lord C. ; and Lord C.’s 
gentleman sold him to Lord D.’s for a shilling : Lord D. gave 
him to Lord E., and so on, half round the alphabet. From that 
rank he passed into the lower house, and passed the hands of 
as many commoners. But as all these wanted to gel in, and my 
bird wanted to get out, he had almost as little store set by him 
in London as in Paris. 

It is impossible but many of my readers must have heard of 
him; and if any by mere chance have ever seen him, — 1 beg leave 



-c 129 


to inform them that that bird was my bird, — or some vile copy 
set up to represent him. 

1 have nothing further to add upon him, blit that, from that 
time to this, I have borne this poor starling as the crest to my 

arms. And let the herald’s officers twist his neck about if 

they dare. 




THE ADDRESS 

VERSAILLES 



I should not like to have .mv enemy lake a 
view of m.y mind when I am going to ask 
protection of any man : for which reason 1 
generally endeavour to protect myself; but 

this going to Monsieur le Due de C 

was an act of compulsion; — had it 
been an act of choice, 1 should have 
done it, 1 suppose, like other people. 

How many mean plans of dirl\ 
address, as 1 went along, did my servile 
heart form! 1 deserved the Bastile for every one of them. 

Then nothing would serve me, when 1 got within sighl of 
Versailles, but pitting words and sentences together, and con- 
ceiving altitudes and tones to writhe myself inlo Monsieur Ic 

Ducde C ’sgood graces. — This will do, said I.— Just as well, 

retorted I again, as a coat carried up to him by" an adventurous. 



-C' 131 >- 


tailor, without taking his measure. — Fool! continued I, — see 
Monsieur le Due’s face first;- — observe what character is written 
in it;— take notice in what posture he stands to hear’you 
mark the turns and expressions of his body and limbs; — and for 
the tone, — the first sound which comes from his lips will give 
it you; and, from all these together, you’ll compound an address 
at once upon the spot, which cannot disgust the Duke; — the 
ingredients are his own, and most likely to go down. 

Weill said I, I wish it. well over. — Coward again! as if man 
to man was not equal, throughout the whole surface of the globe, 
and if in the field, why not face to face in the cabinet too? and 
trust me, Yorick, whenever it is not so, man is false to himself, 
and betrays his own succours ten times, where nature does it 

once. Go to the Due de C with the Bastile in thy looks; — my 

life for it, thou wilt be sent back to Paris in half-an-hour with an 
escort. 

[believe so, said I. — Then I’ll go to the Duke, by Heaven! 
with all the gaiety and debonairness in the w.orld. 

— And there you are wrong again, replied I. A heart at 

ease, Yorick, flies into no extremes, — ’tis ever on its centre. Well! 
well! cried I, as the coachman turned in at the gates, I find I shall 
do very well: and by thetimehe had w'heeled round the court, and 
brought me up to the door, I found myself so much the better 
for my own lecture, that I neither ascended the steps like a vic- 
tim to justice, w ho was to part with life upon the topmast, — nor 
did I mount them with a skip and a couple of strides, as I do 
when I fly up, Eliza! to thee, to meet it. 

AS I entered the door of the saloon, I was met by a person 
who possibly might be the maitre d’hotel , but had more the air 

of one of the under secretaries, who told me the Due de C 

was busy. lam utterly ignorant, said I, of the forms of obtain- 

ing an audience, being an absolute stranger, and, what is 
woise in the present conjuncture of affairs, being an English- 


13 2 c^- 


man too. He replied, that did not increase the difficulty. — 1 

made him a slightbow, and told him, I, had something of import- 
ance to say to Monsieur le Due. The secretary looked towards 
the stairs, as if he was about to lea've me to carry up this account 
to some one. — But I must not mislead you, said I, — for what l 
have to say is of no manner of importance to Monsieur le Due de 
C , but of great importance to myself. C’est line autre af- 
faire, replied he. Not at all, said I, to a man of gallantry. But 

pray, good sir, continued I, when can a stranger hope to have 

accessed In not less than two hours, said he, looking at his 

watch. The number of equipages in the courtyard seemed to 

justify the calculation, that I could have no nearera prospect; — 
and as walking backwards and forwards in the saloon, without a 
soul to commune with, was for the time as bad as being in the 
Bastile itself, I instantly went back to my remise, and bid the 
coachman drive me to the Cordon Bleu , which was the nearest 
hotel. 

I think there is a fatality in it; — I seldom go to the place I set 
out for. 




LE PATISSIER 

VERSAILLES 


Before I had got half-way down the 
street, I changed my mind : as I am at 
Versailles, thought 1, 1 might as well take a 
view of the town; so I pulled the cord, and 
ordered the coachman to drive round some 

of the principal streets. 1 suppose the 

town is not very large, said 1. — The coach- 
man begged pardon for Setting me right, 
and told me it was very superb ; and that 
numbersof the firsldukesand marquises and counts had hotels. — 

The Count de B , of whom the bookseller at the Quai de Conti 

had spoken so handsomely the night before, came instantly into my 
mind.— And why should l not go, thought I, to the Count de B— — 
who has so high an idea of English books and Englishmen, 



-c 134 » 


— and loll him my story? So I changed my mind a second lime. 
In truth, it was the third ; for l had intended that day for Madame 

de R , in the rue St.-Pierre, and had devoutly sent her word 

by h evfille de chambre that I would assuredly wait upon her; — 
but I am governed by circumstances I cannot govern them : 
so seeing a man standing w ith a basket on the other side of the 
street, as if he had something to sell, I bid La Fleur go up to 
him, and inquire for the Count’s hotel. 

La Fleur returned, a little pale; and told me it was a Chevalier 

de St. -Louis selling pates. It is impossible, La Fleur, said I. — 

La Fleur' could no more account for the phenomenon than 
myself; but persisted in his story : he had seen the croix set in 
gold, with its red riband, he said, tied to his buttonhole ; and had 
looked into the basket, and seen the pates which the Chevalier 
was selling ; so could not be mistaken in that. 

Such a reverse in a man’s life awakens a better principle 
than curiosity : I could not help looking for some time at him, as 
I sat in the remise. The more I looked at him, his croix, and his 
basket, the stronger they wove themselves into my brain. — I got 
out of the remise, and went towards him. 

He was begirt with a clean linen apron, which fell below his 
knees, and with a sort of a bib that went half way up his breast. 
Upon the top of this, but a little below the hem, hung his croix. 
His. basket of little pates was covered over with a white damask 
napkin : another of the same kind was spread at the bottom ; 
and there was such a look of proprete and neatness throughout, 
that one might have bought his pates of him as much from appe- 
tite as sentiment. 

He made an offer of them to neither; but stood still with them 
at Ihe corner of a hotel, for those to buy who chose it, without 
solicitation. 

He was about forty-eight; — of a sedate look, something ap- 
proaching to graxily. l did not wonder — 1 went up rather to the 






-< 135 > 

basket than him, and, having lifted up the napkin, and taken one 
of his pates into my hand, — I begged he would explain the 
appearance which affected me. 

He told me, in a few words, that the best part of his life had 
passed in the service; in which, after spending a small patri- 
mony, he had obtained a company and the croix with it ; but that, 
at the conclusion of the last peace, his regiment being re-formed, 
and the whole corps, \Vith those of some other regiments, left 
without any provision, he found himself in a wide world, without 

friends , without a 
livre ; — and , indeed , 
said he, without any- 
thing but this — (point- 
ing, as he said it, to his 

croix.) The poor 

Chevalier won my 
pity; and he finished 
the scene by winning 
my esteem loo. 

The King, he said, 
was the most generous of princes ; but his generosity could 
neither relieve nor reward every one ; and it was only his 
misfortune to be amongst the number. He had a little wife, he 
said, whom he loved, who did the patisserie; and added, he 
felt no dishonour in defending her and himself from want in 
this way, — unless Providence had offered him a better. 

It would be wicked to withhold a pleasure from the good, 
in passing over what happened to this poor Chevalier de St. -Louis 
about nine months after. 

It seems he usually took his stand near the iron gates which 
lead up to the palace; and as his croix had caught the eye of 
numbers, numbers had made the same inquiry which 1 had .done. 
— He had lotd I he same slory. and always \yilh so much modesty 



-< 136 » 


and good sense, that it had reached at last the king’s ears ; — w ho, 
hearing the Chevalier had been a gallant officer, and respected 
by the whole regiment as a man of honour and integrity, — he 
broke up his little trade by a pension of fifteen hundred livres 
a-year. 

As 1 have told this to please the reader, I beg he will allow 
me to relate another, out of its order, to please myself; — the 
two stories reflect light upon each other, — and ’tis a pity they 
should be parted. 





THE SWORD 

RENNES 



When slates and Empires have 
their periods of declension, and feel in 
their turns what distress and poverty 
is, — I stop not to tell the causes which 

gradually brought the house of d’E 

in Britanny into decay. The Marquis 
d’E had fought up against his con- 

dition with great firmness ; wishing to 
preserve, and still show to the world 
some little fragments of what his ancestors had beea — their 
indiscretions had put it out of his power. There was enough 
left for the little exigencies of obscurity. But he had two boys 
who looked up to him for light; he thought they deserved 
it. He had tried his sword, — it could not open the way, — 


18 


138 »- 


the mounting was too expensive, — and simple economy was not 
a match for it : — there was no resource but commerce. 

In any other province in France save Britanny, this was 
smiting the root for ever of the little tree his pride and affection 
wished to see re-blossom. — But in Britanny, there being a pro- 
vision for this, he availed himself of it: and, taking an occasion 
when the stales were assembled at Rennes, the Marquis, at- 
tended with his two boys, entered the court ; and having pleaded 
the right of an ancient law of the duchy, which, though seldom 
claimed, he said, was no less in force, he took his sword from 
his side; — Here, said he, take it; and be trusty guardians of it 
till better times put me in condition to reclaim it. 

The president accepted the Marquis’s sword ; — he stayed a 
few minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his house, and 
departed. 

The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for 
Martinico, and, in about nineteen or twenty years of successful 
application to business, with some unlooked-for bequests from 
distant branches of his house, returned home to reclaim his 
nobility, and to support it. 

It was an incident of good fortune, which will never happen 
to any traveller but a sentimental one, that 1 should be at 
Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition. 1 call it 
solemn ; — it was so to me. 

The Marquis entered the court with his whole family he 
supported his lady; — his eldest son supported his sister, and 
his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his 
mother; — he put his handkerchief to his face twice. 

— There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had ap- 
proached within six pacesofthe tribunal, he gave the Marchioness 
to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his family, 
— he reclaimed his sword. His sword was given him: and the 
moment he got it into his hand, he drew it almost out of the 


-C 139 > 


scabbard : — twas the shining face of a friend he had once 
given up : — he looked attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, 
as if to see whether it was the same, — when observing a little 
rust which it had contracted near the point, he brought it near 
his eye, and bending his head down over it, — I think I saw a 
tear fall upon the place, — I could not be deceived by what 
followed. 

“1 shall find,” said he, “ some other way to get it off.” 

When the Marquis had said this, he returned his sword into 
its scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it, — and, with his 
wife and daughter, and his two sons following.him, walked out. 

Oh how I envied him his feelings! 




THE PASSPORT 

VERSAILLES 


I found no difficulty in getting admit- 
tance to Monsieur le Comte de B The 

set of Shakespeare was laid upon the table, 
and he was tumbling them over. I walked 
up close to the table, and giving first such 
a look at the books as to make him conceive 
I knew what they were, — I told him I had 
come without any one to present me, know- 
ing I should meet with a friend in his 
apartment, who, I trusted, would do it for me. — It is my country- 
man, the great Shakespeare, said I, pointing to his works; et 
aye\ la bonte, mon cher ami , apostrophizing his spirit, added I, 
de me faire cet honneur-la. 

The Count smiled at the singularity of the introduction; and 



-c 1 41 >- 


seeing I looked a little pale and sickly, insisted upon my taking 
an arm-chair; so I sat down; and to save him conjectures upon 
a visit so out of all rule, l told him simply of the incident in the 
bookseller’s shop, and how that had impelled me rather to go to 
him with the story of a little embarrassment I was under, than 
to any other man in France.— — And what is your embarrass- 
ment? let me hear it, said the Count. So 1 told him the story 

just as I have told it the reader 

— And the master of my hotel, said 1, as I concluded 
it, will needs have it, Monsieur le Comte, that I should be sent 
to the Bastile; — but I have no apprehension, continued I, — 
for, in falling into the hands of the most polished people in the 
world, and being conscious I was a true man, and not come to 
spy the nakedness of the land, I scarce thought I lay at their 
mercy. It does not suit the gallantry of the French, Monsieur le 
Comte, said I, to show it against invalids. 

An animated blush came into the Count de B ’s cheeks 

as I spoke this Ne craigne\ rien — Don’t fear, said he. 

Indeed I don’t, replied I again. — Besides, continued I,, a little 
sportingly, I have come laughing all the way from London to 
Paris; and I do not think Monsieur le due de Choiseul is such 
an enemy to mirth, as to send me back crying for my pains. 

— My application to you, Monsieur le Comte de B 

(making him a low bow), is to desire he will not. 

The Count heard me with great good-nature, or I had not 
said half so much, — and once or twice said,- C'est bien dit. 
So I rested my cause there, — and determined to say no more 
about it. 

The Count led the discourse : we talked of indifferent things, 

— of books, and politics, and men; and then of women. God 

bless them all! said 1, after much discourse about them, — there 
is not a man upon earth who loves them so much as I do. After 
all Ihe foibles I have seen, and all the satires I have read against 


-c 142 >- 


them, still I love them; being firmly persuaded that a man who 
has not a sort of an affection for (he whole sex, is incapable of 
ever loving a single one as he ought. 

Eh bien! Monsieur VAnglois, said the Count gaily; — you are 
not come to spy the nakedness of the land ; — I believe you ; — 
ni encore , I dare say, that of our women : but permit me to con- 
jecture, — if, parhasard, they fell into your way, that the prospect 
would not affect you. 

I have something within me which cannot bear the shock of 
the least indecent insinuation : in the sportability of chit-chat I 
have often endeavoured to conquer it, and with infinite pain have 
hazarded a thousand things to a dozen of the sex together. — - 
the least of which I could not venture to a single one to gain 
Heaven. 

Excuse me, Mpnsieur le Comte, said 1 : — as for the naked- 
ness of your land, if I saw it, I should cast my eyes over it with 
tears in them ; — and for that of your women (blushing at the 
idea he had excited in me) I am so evangelical in this, and have 
such a fellow-feeling for whatever is weak about them, that I would 
cover it with a garment, if I knew how to throw it on; — but 1 
could wish, continued I, to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and, 
through the different disguises of customs, climates, and reli- 
gion, find out what is good in them to fashion my own by; — 
and therefore am l come. 

It is for this reason, Monsieur lc Comte, continued 1, that 1 
have not seen the Palais Royal, — nor the Luxembourg, — nor the 
Facade of the Louvre, — nor have attempted to swell the cata- 
logues we have of pictures, statues, and churches. — I conceive 
every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and 
see the original drawings, and loose sketches, hung up in it, than 
the Transfiguration of Raphael itse^. 

The thirst of this, continued i, as impatient as that which 
inflames the breast of the connoisseur, has led me from my own 


~c 143 >- 


home inlo France, — and from France will lead me through Italy; 
— ’lis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of Nature, and 
those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each 
other, — and the world, belter than we do 

The Count said a great many civil things to me upon the 
occasion, and added, very politely, how much he stood obliged 
to Shakespeare for making me known to him. — — But, a-propos, 
said he; — Shakespeare is full of great things, — he forgot the 
small punctilio of announcing your name . — it puts you under 
the necessity of doing it yourself. 




THE PASSPORT 

VERSAILLES 


There is not a more perplexing affair in 
life to me than to set about telling any one 
who I am, — for there is scarce anybody I 
cannot give a better account of than myself; 
and I have often wished I could do it in a 
single word, — and have an end of it. It was 
the only time and occasion in my life I could 
accomplish this to any purpose; — for Shakespeare lying upon 
the table, and recollecting I was in his books, I took up 
Hamlet, and turning immediately to the grave-diggers’ scene in 
the fifth act, I laid my finger upon Yorick; and advancing the 
book to the Count, with my finger all the way over the name, — 
Me void! said 1. 

Now, whether the idea of poor Yorick’s skull was put out 



-C 145 >• 


of the Count’s mind by the reality of my own, or by what magic 
he could drop a period of seven or eight hundred years, makes 
nothing in this account, ’lis certain, the French conceive better 
than they combine; — I wonder at nothing in this world, and the 
less at this; inasmuch as one of the first of our own church, for 
whose candour and paternal sentiments I have the highest vene- 
ration, fell into the same mistake in the very same case : — “ He 
could not bear,” he said, “ to look into sermons wrote by the 
King of Denmark’s jester.” — Good, my lord! said I; but there 
are two Yoricks. The ’i orick your lordship thinks of has been 
dead and buried eight hundred years ago : he flourished in 
Hopwendillus’s court; — the other Yorick is myself, who have 

flourished, my lord, in no court. — He shook his head Good 

God! said 1, you might as well confound Alexander the Great 

with Alexander the Coppersmith, my lord! ’Twas all one, 

he replied. 

— If Alexander, King of Macedon, could have translated 
your lordship, said I, I’m sure your lordship would not have 
said so. 

The poor Count de B fell but into the same error. 

— £7, Monsieur, est-il Yorick? cried the Count. Je le 

suis , said I. Vous? Moi — moi qui ai ihonneur de vous 

purler , Monsieur le Comte. Mon Dieu! said he, embracing 

me, — Vous etes Yorick? 

The Count instantly pul the Shakespeare into his pocket, 
and left me alone in his room 



v 





THE PASSPORT 
VERSAILLES 

1 could not conceive why the 

Count de B had gone so abruptly 

out of the room, any more than 1 
could conceive why he had put ihe 
Shakespeare into his pocket. — 
Mysteries which must explain them- 
selves are not worth the loss of time 
which a conjecture about them takes 
up: 'twas better to read Shakespeare; so taking up “Much Ado 
about Nothing ” I transported myself instantly from the chair 
1 sal in to Messina in Sicily, and got so busy with Don Pedro, 
and Benedict, and Beatrice, that I thought not of Versailles, the 
Count, or the passport. 

Sweet pliability of man’s spirit, that can at once surrender 



-c 147 >- 


itself to illusions which cheat expectation and sorrow ofj.heif* 
weary moments! — Long, — long since had ye number’d out my 
days, had 1 not trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted 
ground. When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep 
for my strength, 1 get off it, to some smooth velvet path which 
fancy has scatter’d over with rosebuds of delight; and, having 
taken a few turns in it, come back strengthen’d and refresh’d. 
— When evils press sore upon me, and there is no retreat from 
them in this world, then 1 take a new course; — 1 leave it, — and, 
as 1 have a clearer idea of the Elysian Fields than I have of 
Heaven, 1 force myself, like /Eneas, into them; — >1 see him meet 
the pensive shade of his forsaken Dido, and wish to recognise it; 
— I see the injured spirit wave her head, and turn off silent 
from the author of her miseries and dishonours; — 1 lose the 
feelings for myself in hers, and in those affections which .were 
wont to make me mourn for her when I was at school. 

Surely, this is not walking in a vain shadow,— nor^ does 
man disquiet himself in vain by it : — he of'tener does so in trust- 
ing the issue of his commotions to reason only. — 1 can safely 
say, for myself, I was never able to conquer any one-single bad 
sensation in my heart so decisively , as by beating up as fast 
as I could for some kindly and gentle sensation to tight it upon 
its own ground. 

When I had got to the end of the third act, the Count de 

B entered with my passport in his hand.. Mons. le due de 

C , said the Count, is as good a prophet, I dare say, as 

he is a statesman. Un homme qui rit , said the Duke, ne 

sera jamais dangereux. Had it been for any one but the 

King’s jester, added the Count, 1 could not have got it these 

two hours! Pardonne\-moi, Mons. !e Comte, said I, I am not 

the King’s jester. But you are Yorick? \es. Et vous 

plaisantei? 1 answered, Indeed, 1 did jest, — but was not 

paid for it; — ’l was entirely at mv own expense. 


-C 148 »- 


We have no jester at court, Mons. le Comte, said I ; the last 
we had was in the licentious reign of Charles II. ; — since which 
time, our manners have been so gradually refining, that our court 
at present is so full of patriots, who wish for nothing but the 
honours .and wealth of our country; — and our ladies are all so 
chaste, so spotless, so good, so devout, — there is nothing fcr 
a jester to make a jest of. 

Voila nil persiflage! cried the Count. 




THE PASSPORT 

VERSAILLES 



As the passport was directed to ail 
lieutenant-governors, governors and com- 
mandants ofcities, generalsof armies, justi- 
ciaries, and all officers of justice, to let 
Mr. Yorick the King’s jester, and his 
baggage, travel quietly along, — I wn the 
triumph of obtaining the passport was not 
a little tarnished by the figure I cut in 
,t. — But there is nothing unmixed in this 


world, and some of the gravest of our divines have carried it 
so far as to affirm, that enjoyment itself was attended even 
with a sigh,— and that the greatest they knew of terminated 
in a general way, in liltle belter than a convulsion. 

1 remember the grave and learned Bevoriskius, in his Com- 


150 >- 


menlary upon the Generations from Adam, very naturally breaks 
off in the middle of a note, to give an account to the world of a 
couple of sparrows upon the outedge of his window, which had 
incommoded him all the time he wrote; and, at last, had entirely 
taken him off from his genealogy. 

— ’Tis strange! writes Bevoriski us, but the facts are cer- 
tain; for I have had the curiosity to mark them down, one by 
one, with my pen ; — but the cock-sparrow, during the little time 
that I could have finished the other half of this note, has actually 
interrupted me with the reiteration of his caresses three-and- 
twenty times and a half. 

How merciful, adds Bevoriskius, is Heaven to his creatures! 

Ill-fated Yorick! that the gravest of thy brethren should be 
able to write that to the world, which stains thy face with crim- 
son to copy, even in thy study. 

But this is nothing to my travels ; — so 1 twice, — twice beg 
pardon for it. 




CHARACTER 

VERSAILLES 


And how do you find the French? 

said the Count de B , after he had 

given me the passport. 

The reader may suppose, that, 
after so obliging a proof of courtesy, 
I could not be at a loss to say some- 
thing handsome to the inquiry. 

— Mais passe pour cela. 

Speak frankly, said he : do you find 
all the urbanity in the French which the world give us the 

honour of? 1 had found everything, I said, which confirmed 

it. V raiment, said the Count, les Francois sont polis. To 

an excess, replied I. 

TheCounttooknoticeofthe word excesse, and would have it I 



-c 152 


meant more than I said. I defended myself a long time, as well 
as I could, against it; — he insisted I had a reserve, and that 
I would speak my opinion frankly. 

I believe, Mons. le Comte, said I, that man has a certain 
compass, as well as an instrument; and that the social and 
other calls have occasion, by turns, for every key in him; so that, 
if you begin a note too high or too low, there must be a want 
either in the upper or under part, to till up the system of harmony 
The Count de B did not understand music; so de- 
sired me to explain it some other way. A polished nation, 

my dear Count, said 1, makes every one its debtor; and 
besides, urbanity itself, like the fair sex, has so many charms, 
it goes against the heart to say it can do ill; and yet, I believe, 
there is but a certain line of perfection that man, take him 
altogether, is empowered to arrive at; — if he gels beyond, he 
rather exchanges qualities than gels them. 1 must not presume 
to say how far this has affected the French in the subject we 
are speaking of; — but should it ever be the case of the English, 
in the progress of their refinements, to arrive at the same polish 
which distinguishes the French, if we did not lose the politesse 
du coeur, which inclines men more to humane actions than 
courteous ones, — we should at least lose that distinct variety 
and originality of character, which distinguishes them not only 
from each other, but from all the world besides. 

I had a few of King William’s shillings, as smooth as glass, in 
my pocket, and foreseeing they would be of use in the illustra- 
tion of my hypothesis, I had got them into my hand, when 1 had 
proceeded so far : — 

See, Mons. le Comte, said I, rising up, and laying them 
before him upon the table, — by jingling arid rubbing one against 
another for seventy years together in one body’s pocket or 
another’s, they are become so much alike you can scarce dis- 
tinguish one shilling from another. 


-c 153 >- 


The English, like ancient medals, kept more apart, and pass- 
ing but few people’s hands, preserve the first sharpness 
which the fine hand of Nature has given them; — they are not 
so pleasant to feel — but, in return, the legend is so visible, 
that, at the first look, you see whose image and superscription 
they bear. But the French, Mons. le Comte, added I (wishing to 
soften what I had said), have so many excellences, they can the 
better spare this; — they are a loyal, a gallant, a generous, an 
ingenious, and a good-temper’d people as is under Heaven; 
— if they have a fault, they are too serious. 

Mon Dieu! cried the Count, rising out of his chair. 

Mais vous plaisante said he, correcting his exclamation. 

1 laid my hand upon my breast, and, with earnest gravity, 

assured him it was my most settled opinion. 

— The Count said he was mortified, he could not slay to 
hear my reasons, being engaged to go that moment to dine 
with the Due de C . 

But, if it is not too far to come to Versailles, to eat your soup 
with me, I beg, before you leave France, I may have the pleasure 
of knowing you retract your opinion,— or in what manner you 

support it. But if you do support it, Mons. I’Anglois, said he, 

you must do it with all your powers, because you have the whole 

world against you. 1 promised the Count I would do myself 

the honour of dining with him before 1 set out for Italy ; — so took 
my leave. 




THE TEMPTATION 


PARIS 



When I alighted at the hotel, the 
porter told me a young woman with 
a band-box had been that moment 

inquiring for me. 1 do not know, 

said the porter, whether she is gone 
avvay or not. — I took the key of my 
chamber of him, and went upstairs; 
and, ^vhen I had got within ten steps 
of the top of the landing before my 
door, 1 met her coming easily down. 

It was the lair fille de chambre I had walked along the Q.uai 
de Conti with • Madame de R had sent her upon some 










-c 155 >- 


commission to a marchande de inodes within a step or two of the 
Hotel de Modene ; and, as I had failed in waiting upon her, had 
bid her inquire if I had left Pans ; and, if so, whether I had not 
left a letter addressed to her. 

As the fair fille de chambre was so near my door, she returned 
back, and went into the room with me for a moment or two, 
whilst I wrote a card. 

It was a fine still evening in the latter end of the month of 
May, — the crimson window-curtains (which were of the same 
colour as those of the bed) were drawn close, — the sun was set- 
ting, and reflected through them so warm a tint in the fair fille 
de chambre’s face, — I thought she blushed; — the idea of it made 
me blush myself ; — we were quite alone, and that superinduced 
a second blush before the first could get off. 

There is a sort of a pleasing half guilty blush, where the 
blood is more in fault than the man; — ’tis sent impetuous from 
the heart, and virtue flies after it, — not to call it back, but to 
make the sensation of it more delicious to the nerves ; — ’tis 
associated 

But I’ll not describe it; — I felt something at first within me 
which was not in strict unison with the lesson of virtue I had 
given her the night before ; — I sought five minutes for a card ; 
I knew I had not one. I took up a pen, — I laid it down again, — 
my hand trembled : — the devil was in me. 

I know as well as any one he is an adversary, whom, if we 
resist, he will fly from us ; but I seldom resist him at all, from a 
terror that, though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in Ihe 
combat; so I give up the triumph for security; and, instead of 
thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself. 

The fair fille de chambre came close up to the bureau, where 
I was looking for a card, — took up first the pen I cast down, 
then offered to hold the ink; she offered it so sweetly, I was 
going to accept it, but I durst not ; I have nothing, my dear, 


-C 156 


said I, to write upon. Write it, said she, simply, upon 

anything. 

— I was just going to cry out, Then I will write it, fair girl, 
upon thy lips ! 

— If I do, said I, I shall perish; so I took her by the hand, 
and led her to the door, and begged, she would not forget the 

lesson I had given her. She said, indeed she would not, and, 

as she uttered it with some earnestness, she turned about, and 
gave me both her hands, closed together, into mine; — it was 
impossible not to compress them in that situation ; — I wished 
to let them go; and all the time I held them, 1 kept arguing 
within myself against it, — and still I held them on. — In two 
minutes I found I had all the battle to fight over again ; — and I 
felt my legs and every limb about me tremble at the idea. 

The foot of the bed was within a yard and a half of the place 
where we were standing. — I had still, hold of her hands — (and 
how it happened, I can give no account) ; but I neither asked 
her, nor drew her, nor did l think of the bed; — but so it did 
happen, we both sat down. 

— I’ll just show you, said the fair fille de chambre, the little 
purse I have been making to-day to hold your crown. So she 
put her hand into her right pocket, which was next me, and felt 

for it some time ; — then into the left. “She had lost it.” 

I never bore expectation more quietly ; — it was in her right 
pocket at last ; she pulled it out ; it was of green taffeta, lined 
with a little bit of white quilted satin, and just big enough to 
hold the crown : — she put it into my hand : it was pretty ; and 
I held it ten minutes, with the back of my hand resting upon 
her lap, looking sometimes at the purse, sometimes on one side 
of it. 

A stitch or two had broke out in the gathers of my stock , 
the fair Jille de chambve, without saying a word, took out her 
little housewife , threaded a small needle , and sewed it up. 


-c 157 3- 


I foresaw it would hazard the glory of the day, and , as she 
passed her hand in silence across and across my neck in the 
manoeuvre, I felt the laurels shake which fancy had wreathed 
about my head. 

A strap had given way in her walk, and the buckle of her 

shoe was- just falling off. See, said the fille de chambre , 

holding up her foot.- 1 could not, from my soul, but fasten the 

buckle in return; and, putting in the strap, — and, lifting up the 
other foot with it, when I had done, to see both were right, in 
doing it so suddenly, it unavoidably threw the fair fille de 
chambre off her centre, — and then 




THE CONQUEST 



Yes, — and then Ye, whose clay- 

cold heads and lukewarm hearts can 
argue down or mask your passions, tell 
me, what trespass is it that man should 
have them? or how his spirit stands an- 
swerable to the Father of spirits, but for 
his conduct under them? 

If Nature has so wove her web of 
kindness, that some threads of love and 
r desire are entangled with the piece, — 
must the whole web be rent in drawing them out ? — Whip me 
such stoics, great Governor of Nature ! said \ to myself ; — 


h: 159 


wherever tny Providence shall place me for the trials of my 
virtue; whatever is my danger; — whatever is my situation, — let 
me feel the movements which rise out of it, and which belong 
to me as a man, — and if I govern them as a good one, I will 
trust the issues to thy justice; for thou hast made us, and not 
we ourselves. 

As I finished my address, 1 raised the fairy?//e de chambre 
up by the hand, and led her out of the room: — she stood by 
me till I locked the door and put the key in my pocket , — and 
then , — the victory being quite decisive, — and not till then, 1 
pressed my lips to her cheek, and, taking her by the hand 
again, led her safe to the gate of the hotel. 




THE MYSTERY 

PARIS 


If a man knows the heart, he will 
know it was impossible to go back 
instantly to- my chamber; — it was touch- 
ing a cold key with a flat third to it. 
upon the close of a piece of music, 
which had called forth my affections; 
therefore, when I let go the hand of the 
fille de chambre , 1 remained at the gate 
of the hotel for some time, looking at 
every one who passed by, and forming conjectures upon them, 
till my attention got fixed upon a single object which con- 
founded all .kind of reasoning upon him. . 

It was a tall figure, of a philosophic, serious, adust look. 



-< 1G1 3- 


vvhich passe i and repassed sedately along the street, making 
a turn of about sixty paces on each side of the gate of the 
hotel. — The man was about fifty-two, had a small cane under 
his arm, was dressed in a dark drab-coloured coat,^ waistcoat, 
and breeches, which seemed to have seen some yeark’ service; 
— they were still clean, and there was a little air of frugal pro- 
prete throughout him. By his pulling off his hat, and his atti- 
tude of accosting a good many in his way, I saw he was asking 
charity; so I got a sous or two out of my pocket ready to give 
him, as he took me in his turn, 
asking anything, — and yet did not 
go five steps farther before he asked 
charity" of a little woman. — 1 was 
much more likely to have given of 
the two. He had ^scarce done with 
the woman, when he pulled his hat 
off to another who. was coming the 
same ..wav. An ancient gentleman 
came slowly, and after him, a young 
smart one. He let them both pass, 
and asked nothing: I stood observ- 
ing him half-an-hour : in which time he had made a dozen 
turns backwards and forwards, and found that he invariably 
pursued the same plan. 

There were two things very singular in this, which set my 
brain to work, and to no purpose the first was, Why the 
man should only tell his stor,y to the sex;— and secondly, 
what kind of story it was,, and what species of eloquence it 
could be, which softened the hearts of the women, 'which he 
knew ’twas to no purpose to practise upon the men. 

There were two other circumstances w hich entangled lhis 
mystery the one was, He told every woman what he had to 
say, in her, ear, and in a way Which had much more the air of 


He passed me without 



162 » 


a secret than a petition : — the other was, It was always suc- 
cessful ; — he never stopped a woman but she pulled out her 
purse, and immediately ga\e him something. 

1 could form no system to explain the phenomenon. 

1 had got a riddle to amuse me for the rest of the evening , 
so 1 walked upstairs to my chamber 



r 



THE CASE OF CONSCIENCE 

PARIS 


I was immediately followed up by the 
master of the hotel, who came into my room 
to tell me I must provide lodgings elsewhere. 
How so, friend? said I. He answer- 
ed, I had a young woman locked up with 
me two hours that evening in my bedcham- 
ber, and ’twas against the rules of his house. 

Very well, said I, we’ll all part friends 

then, — for the girl is no worse, — and I am 
no worse, — and you will be just as I found 
you. — It was enough, he said, to overthrow' the credit of his 
hotel.— Voye{-vous, Monsieur, said he, pointing to the foot of 

the bed we had been sitting upon. 1 own it had something 

of the appearance of an evidence ; but my pride not suffering 



« 


-c 164 >- 

me to enter into detail of the case, I exhorted him to let his 
soul sleep in peace, as I resolved to let mine do that night, and 
that I would discharge what i owed him at breakfast. 

— I should not have minded, Monsieur, said he, if you had 

had twenty girls ’Tie a score more, replied I, interrupting 

him, than I ever reckoned upon. Provided, added he, it had 

been but in a morning. And does the difference of the time 

of the day at Paris make a difference in the sin ? It made a 

difference, he said, in the scandal. 1 like a good distinction 

in my heart; and cannot say I was intolerably out of temper 

with the man. 1 own it necessary, resumed the master of the 

hotel, that a stranger at Paris should have opportunities ore- 
sented to him of buying laee, and silk stockings, and ruffles, et 

tout cela; and ’tis nothing if a woman comes with a band-box. 

O’ my conscience, said I, she had one; but I never looked 

into it. Then Monsieur, said he, has bought nothing? 

Not one earthly thing, replied I. Because, said he, I could 

recommend you to one who would use you en conscience. 

But I must see her this night, said I. He made me a low 

bow, and walked down. 

Now shall I triumph over this maitre d‘ hotel, cried I , —and 
what then? Then I shall let him see I know he is a dirty fellow. 
— And what then? — What then! — I was too near myself to say it 
was for the sake of others. — I had no good answer left : — there 
was more of spleen than of principle in my project, and I was 
sick of it before the execution. 

In a few minutes the grisette came in with her box of lace. 
I’ll buy nothing, however, said I, within myself. 

The grisette would show me everything. I was hard to 
please; she would not seem to see it. She opened her little 
magazine, andJaid all her laces, one after another, before me ; 
— unfolded and folded them up again, one by one, with the 
most patient sweetness. — I might buy, — or not; — she would let 


-C 165 


.me have everything at my own price; — the poor creature seemed 
anxious to get a penny; and laid herself out to win me, and not 
so 'much in a manner which seemed artful, as in one 1 felt 
simple and caressing. 

If there is not a fund of honest Gullibility in man, so much 
the worse; — my heart relented, and I gave up my second reso- 
lution as quietly as the first. Why should I chastise one for the 
trespass of another? If thou art tributary to this Jyrant of a host 
thought 1, looking up in her face, so much harder is thy 
bread. 

If I had not had more than four louis d’ors in my purse, 
there was no such thing as rising up and showing her the door 
till I had first laid three of them out in a pair of ruffles. 

— The master of the hotel will share the profit with her; — 
no matter, — then I have only paid, as manv a poor soul has 
paid before me, for an act he could not do, or think of. 




THE RIDDLE 

PARIS 


When La Fleur came up to wait upon 
me at supper, he told me how sorry the 
master of the hotel was, for his affront to me 
in bidding me change my lodgings. 

A man who values a good night’s rest will 
not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can 
help it. — So I bid La Fleur tel the master of 
the hotel, that 1 was sorry, on my side, for the occasion I had given 
him; — and you may tell him, if you will, La Fleur, added 1, that 
if the young woman should call again, 1 shall not see her. 

This was a sacrifice not to him, but myself, having resolved 
after so narrow an escape, to run no more risks, but to leave 
Paris, if it was possible, with all the virtue I entered it. 

— C’est deroger a noblesse, Monsieur , said La Fleur, making 
me a bow down to the ground as he said it . — Et encore, Mon- 



-c 1 G7 > 


sicur, said lie, may change his senliincnls ; and i ( (par hasard) 

he should like lo amuse himself, 1 lincl no amusement in it, 

said I, interrupting him. 

— Mon Dieit ! said La Fleur, — and look awav . 

In an hour’s time he came to put me to bed, and was more 
than commonly officious: — something hung upon his lips to say 
lo me, or ask me, which he could not get off; l could not con- 
ceive what it was; and indeed gave myself little trouble to find 
it out, as 1 had another riddle so much more interesting upon 
my mind, which was that of the man’s asking charity before the 
door of the hotel. — I would have given anything to have got lo 
the bottom of it; arid that not out of curiosity, — ’tis so low a prin- 
ciple of inquiry, in general, I would not purchase the gratifica- 
tion of it with a two-sous piece; — but a secret, I thought, which 
so soon and so certainly softened the heart of every woman jou 
came near, was a secrelat least equal lo the philosopher’s stone ; 
had I had both the Indies, I would li'ave given up one lo have 
been master of it. 

I tossed and turned it almost all night long in my brains, 
to no manner of purpose; and when 1 awoke in the morning, 1 
found my spirits as much troubled with my dreams, as ever the 
King of Babvlon had been with his; and I will not hesitate to 
affirm, it would have puzzled all the wise men of Paris as 
much as those of Chaldea, to have given its interpretation. 



I 



LE DIMANCHE 

PARIS 


It was Sunday; and when 
La Fleur came in , in the 
morning, with my coffee and 
roll and butter, he had got 
himself so gallantly arrayed, I 
scarce knew him. 

1 had covenanted at Monlriul to give him a new hat with 
a silver button and loop, and four louis d’ors pour s’adoniser ,• 
when we got to Paris; and the poor fellow, to do him justice* 
had done wonders with it. 

He had bought a bright, clean, good scarlet coat, and a paii? 

of breeches of the same. -= They were not a crown worse, he 

said, for the wearing. — 1 wished him hanged for telling me. ■’ 

They looked so fresh, that though l knew the thing could not be 



-c 169 >- 


done, yet I would rather have imposed upon my fancy with 
thinking I had bought them new for the fellow, than that they 
had come out of the Rue de Friperie. 

This is a nicety which makes not the heart sore at Paris. 

He had purchased, moreover, a handsome blue satin waist- 
coat, fancifully enough embroidered;— this was, indeed, some- 
thing the worse for the service it had done, but ’twas clean 
scoured, — the gold had been touched up, and, upon the whole, 
was rather showy than otherwise; — and as the blue was not vio- 
lent, it suited with the coat and breeches 
very well; he had squeezed out of the money, 
moreover, a new bag and a solitaire ; and 
had insisted with the fripier upon a gold pair 
of garters to his breeches’ knees. — He had 
purchased muslin ruffles bien brodees, with 
four livres of his own money; — and a pair 
of white silk stockings for five more; — and, 
to top all, Nature had given him a handsome 
figure, without costing him a sous. 

He entered the room thus set off, with his 
hair dressed in the first style, and with a 
handsome bouquet in his breast. — In a word, 
there was that look of festivity in everything about him, which 
at once put me in mind it was Sunday — and by combining 
both together, it instantly struck me that the favour he wished 
to ask of me the night before, was to spend the day as everybody 
in Paris spent it besides. I had scarce made the conjecture, w'hen 
La Fleur, with infinite humility, but with ajook of trust, as if 
I should not refuse him, begged 1 would grant him the day, 
pour faire Is gallant vis-a-vis de sa maitresse. 

Now it was the very thing 1 intended to do myself vis-a-vis 

Madame de R . 1 had retained the remise on purpose for 

it, and it would not ha\e mortified my vanity lo have had a ser- 



22 


-c 170 >- 


vant so well dressed as La Fleur was, lo have got up behind it: 

I never could have worse spared him. 

But we must feel , not argue, in these embarrassments; — the 
sons and daughters of Service part with liberty, but not with 
nature, in their contracts; they are flesh and blood, arrd have 
their little vanities and .wishes in the midst of the house of bond- 
age as well as their task-masters; — no doubt they have set 
their self-denials at a price, — and their expectations are so 
unreasonable, that I would often disappoint them, but that 

their condition puts 
it so much in rtiy 
power to do it. 

Behold , — Behold 
I am thy servant , — 
disarms me at once 
of the powers of a 
master. 

— Thou shaltgo; 
La Fleur, said I. 

— And what mis- 
tress, La Fleur, said 
I, canst thou have 

picked up in so little a time at Paris? La Fleur laid his 

hand upon his breast, and said, ’Twas a petite demoiselle at 

Monsieur le Couht de B ’s. — La Fleur had a heart made 

for society; and to speak the truth of him, let as few occasions 
slip him as his master,— so that, somehow or other, — but 
how:, — Heaven knows, — he had connected himself with the 
demoiselle upon the landing of the staircase, during the time 
1 was taken' up with my passport; and as there was time 
enough for me to win the Count to my interest, La Fleur had 
contrived to make it do to win the maid to his. The family, it 
seems, was lo be at Paris that day, and he had made a parly 



-e. 171 >- 


wilh her, and two or three more of the Count’s household, 
upon the Boulevards 

Happy people! that once a-vveek at least are sure to lay 
down all your cares together, and dance and sing, and sport 
away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of 
ohler nations to the earth. 




THE FRAGMENT 

PARIS 


La Fleur had left me something 
to amuse myself with for the day 
more than 1 had bargained for, or 
could have entered either into his 
head or mine. 

He had brought the little print 
of butter upon a currant-leaf; and, as the morning was warm, 
and he had a good step to bring it, he had begged a sheet 
of waste paper to put betwixt the currant-leaf and his hand. — 
As that was plate sufficient, I bade him lay it upon the table as 
it was ; and as I resolved to slay within all lay, I ordered him 
to call upon the traiteur , to bespeak my dinner, and leave me to 
breakfasl by myself. 

When 1 had finished the butler, 1 threw the currant-leaf out 



-c 173 > 


of the window, and was going to do the same by the waste 
paper; — but, stopping to read a line first, and that drawing me 
on to a second and third, — I thought it better worth; so I shut 
the window, and drawing a chair up to it, I sat down to read it. 

It was in the old French of Rabelais’ time; and, for aught I 
know, might have been wrote by him : it was, moreover, in a 
Gothic letter, and that so faded and gone off by damps and length 
of time, it cost me infinite trouble to make anything of it. — I 
threw it down ; and then wrote a letter to Eugenius, — then 
I took it up again, and embroiled my patience with it afresh : — 
and then, to cure that, I wrote a letter to Eliza. — Still it kept 
hold of me; and the difficulty of understanding it increased but 
the desire. 

I got my dinner; and after I had enlightened my mind with 
a bottle of Burgundy, I at it again ; — and after two or three hours 
poring upon it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or 
Jacob Spon did upon a nonsensical inscription, 1 thought l 
made sense of it; but to make sure of it, the best way, 1 
imagined, was to turn it into English, and see how it would look 
then ; — so I went on leisurely as a trifling man does, sometimes 
writing a sentence, — then taking a turn or two, — and then 
looking how the world went, out of the window; so that it was 
nine o’clock at night before I had done it, — I then began, and 
read it as follows . — 




THE FRAGMENT 
PARIS 

— Now as the Notary’s wife 
disputed the point with the 

Notary with too much heat, 

1 wish, said the Notary (throwing 
down the parchment), that there 
was another Notary here, only 
to set down and attest all this. 
— And what would you do 
then, Monsieur? said she, rising hastily up. — The Notary’s 
wife was a little fume of a woman, and the Notary thought it 
well to avoid a hurricane by a mild reply 1 would go. an- 


-c 175 s- 


swercd he, lo bed. You may go to the devil, answered the 

Notary’s wife. 

Now there happening lo be but one bed in the house, the 
other two rooms being unfurnished, as is the custom at Paris, 
and the Notary not caring to lie in the same bed with a woman 
who had but that moment sent him pell-mell to the devil, went 
forth with his hat, and cane, and short cloak , the night being 
very windy, and walked out ill at ease towards Ihe Pont Neuf. 

Of all the bridges which ever were built, the whole world 
who have passed over the Pont Neuf must own, that it is the 
noblest, — the linest, — the grandest, — the lightest, — the longest, 
— the broadest, that ever conjoined land and land together 
upon the lace of the terraqueous globe. — 

By this it seems as if the author of the fragment had not 
been a Frenchman. 

The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the 
Sorbonnc can allege against it is, that if there is but a capful 
of wind in or about Paris, ’tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu’d 
there than in any other aperture of the whole city, — and with 
reason good and cogent, Messieurs ; for it comes against you 
without crying garde d’eau, and w ilh such unpremedilable puffs, 
that of the few who cross it with their hats on , not one in fifty 
but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full worth. 

The poor Notary, just as he was passing by the sentry, 
instinctively clapped his cane to the side of it; but in raising it 
up, the point of his cane catching hold of the loop of the senti- 
nel’s' hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the balustrade clear into 
the Seine. 

— ’ Tis an ill wind, said a boatman, who calched it, whicn 
blows nobody any good. 

The sentry, being a Gascon, incontinently twirled up his 
whiskers, and levelled his arquebuss. 

Arquebusses in those days went off with matches ; and an 


-C 17C > 


old woman’s paper lantern at the end of the bridge happening 
to be blown out, she had borrowed the sentry’s match to light 
it; — it gave a moment’s time for the Gascon’s blood to run 

cool, and turn the accident better to his advantage. r'Tis an 

ill wind , said he, catching off the Notary’s castor, and legitima- 
ting the capture with the boatman’s adage. 

The poor Notary crossed the bridge, and passing along the 
Hue de Dauphine into the Fauxbourg of St. Germain, lamented 
himself as he walked along in this 
manner : — 

Luckless man that I am ! said 
the Notary, to be the sport of hur- 
ricanes all my days ! — to be born to 
have the storm of ill language 
levelled against me and my profes- 
sion wherever I go! — to be forced 
into marriage by the thunder of the 
church to a tempest of a woman ! — 
to be driven forth out of my house 
by domestic winds, and despoiled 
of my castor by pontific ones ! — to 
be here, bare-headed, in a windy 
night, at the mercy of the ebbs and 
flows of accidents! — Where am I to 
lay my head ? — Miserable man ! what wind in the two-and-thirty 
points in the. whole compass can blow unto thee, as it does to 
the rest of thy fellow-creatures, good ! 

As the Notary was passing on by a dark passage, complain- 
ing in this sort, a voice called out to a girl, to bid her run for 
the next Notary. — Now the Notary being the next, and availing 
himself of his situation, walked up the passage to the door, and 
passing through an old sort of saloon, was ushered into a 
large chamber, dismantled of ever\ thing but a long military pike, 



-c 177 > 


— a breastplate, — a rusly old sword, and bandoleer, hung up 
equidistant in four different, places against the wall. 

An old personage, who had heretofore been a gentleman, 
and, unless decay of fortune taints the blood along with it, was 
a gentleman at that lime, lay supporting his head upon his 
hand, in his bed; a little table with a taper burning was set 
close beside it, and close by the table was placed a chair. The 
Notary^ sat him down in it; and pulling out his ink-horn and a 
sheet or two of paper which 
he had in his pocket, he placed 
them before him, and dipping 
his pen in his ink. and leaning 
his breast over the table, he 
disposed everything to make 
the gentleman's last will and 
testament. 

— Alas! Monsieur le No- 
Ini re, said the gentleman, raising 
himself up a little, 1 have 
nothing to bequeath, which 
will pay the expense of be- 
queathing, 'except the history 
of myself, and 1 could not die 
in peace unless 1 left it as a 
legacy to the world; the profits arising out of it 1 bequeath to 
you for the pains of taking it from me. It is a story so 
uncommon, it must be read by all mankind; — it' will make the 

fortunes of your house. The Notary dipped his pen into 

his ink-horn. Almighty Director of exery event in my life! 

— said the old gentleman, looking up earnestly, and raising his 
hands towards Heaven, — Thou, whose hand has led me on 
through such a labyrinth of strange passages down into this 
scene of desolation, assist the decaying memory of an old, 

23 



-C 178 >- 


infirm, and broken-hearled man!— Direct my tongue by the 
spirit of thy eternal truth, that this stranger may set down 
nought but what is written in that Book , from whose records, 
said he, clasping his hands together, I am to be condemned or 

acquitted! The Notary held up the point of his pen betwixt 

the taper and his eye. 

— It is a story, Monsieur le Notaire, said the gentleman, 
which will rouse up every affection in nature ; — it will kill the 
humane, and touch the heart of Cruelty herself with pity. — 

The Notary was inflamed with a desire to begin, and put 
his pen a third time into his ink-horn; and the old gentleman, 
turning a little more towards the Notary, began to dictate his 
story in these words : — 

— And where is the rest of it, La Fleur? said I, — as he 
just then entered the room. 




THE FRAGMENT, AND THE BOUQUET * 

PARIS 



When La Fleur came close up to the 
table, and was made to comprehend what 
1 wanted, he told me there were only two 
other sheets of it, which he had wrapped 
round the stalks of a bouquet to keep it 
together, which he had presented to the 

demoiselle upon the Boulevards. Then 

prithee, La Fleur, said I, step back to her, 

to the Count de B ’s hotel, and see if thou canst get it. 

There is no doubt of it, said La Fleur; — and away he flew. 

In a very little time the poor fellow came back, quite out of 
breath, with deeper marks of disappointment in his looks, than 


* Nosegay. 


-c | SO »- 


could arise from the simple irreparabilily of the fragment. Juste 
del! in less than two minutes that the poor fellow had taken his 
last tender farewell of her, — his faithless mistress had given his 
gage d' amour to one of the Count’s footmen, — the footman to a 
young sempstress, — and the sempstress to a fiddler, with my 
fragment at the end of it. — Our misfortunes were involved 
together;-^ gave a sigh, — and La Fleur echoed it back again 
to my ear. 

— How perfidious! cried La Fleur. How unlucky! 

said I. 

— I should not have been mortified, Monsieur, cjuolh 

La Fleur, if she had lost it. Nor I, La Fleur, said I, had I 

found it. 

Whether I did or no will be seen hereafter. 




THIS ACT OF CHARITY 

PARIS 


The man who -either disdains or 
fears to walk up a dark entry, may be 
an excellent good man, and fit for a 
hundred things; but he will not do to make 
a good Sentimental Traveller. I count little 
of the many things I see pass at broad noonday, 
in large and open streets.— Nature is shy, 
and hates to act before spectators; 
but in such an unobserved corner 
you sometimes see a single short 
scene of hers, worth all the sentiments of a dozen brench 
plays compounded together, — and yet they are absolutely fine; 
—and whenever 1 have a more brilliant affair upon my hands 
than common, as they suit a preacher quite as well as a hero, 





1S> 


I generally make my sermon out of ’em; — and for the text, — 
“Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,” — 
is as good as any one in the Bible. 

There is a long dark passage issuing out from the Opera 
Comique into a narrow street; ’tis trod by a few who humbly 
wait for a fiacre % or wish to get off quietly o’foot when the opera 
is done. At the end of it, towards the theatre, ’tis lighted by a 
small candle, the light of which is almost lost before you get 
half-way down, but near the door; — ’tis more for ornament than 
use : you see it as a fixed star of the least magnitude; it burns, — 
but does little good to the world, that we know of. 

In returning along this passage, 1 discerned, as I approached 
within five or six paces of the door, two ladies standing, 
arm-in-arm, with their backs against the wall, waiting, as I 
imagined, for a fiacre : — as they were next the door, 1 thought 
they had a prior right; so edged myself up within a yard or 
little more of them, and quietly took my stand — 1 was in black, 
and scarce seen. 

The lady next me was a tall lean figure of a woman, of 
about thirty-six; the other, of the same size and make, of about 
forty : there was no mark of wife or widow in any one part 
of either of them ; — they seemed to be two upright \eslal 
sisters, unsapped by caresses, unbroke in upon by tendei 
salutations 1 could have wished to have made them happy . 
— their happiness was destined, that night, to come from 
another quarter 

A low voice, with a good turn of expression, and sweet 
cadence at the end of it, begged for a twelve-sous piece betw ixt 
them, for the love ot Heaven. I thought it singular that a beggar 
should fix the quota of an alms, — and that the sum should be 
twelve times as much as what is usually given in the dark 
They both seemed astonished at it as much as mvself. 


► Hackney-coach. 


-C 183 > 


Twelve-sous! said one A Iwelvc-sous piece! said the other, 

— and made no reply. 

— The poor man said, he knew not how to ask less of ladies 
of their rank; and bowed down his head to the ground. 

— Poo! said they, — we have no money. 

The beggar remained silent for a moment or two, and 
renewed his supplication. 

— Do not, my fair young ladies, said he, slop your good ears 

against me. Upon my word, honest man! said the younger, 

we have no change. Then God bless you ! said the poor man, 

and multiply those joys which you can give to others, without 

change! 1 observed the elder sister put her hand into her 

pocket. I’ll see, said she, if I have a sous! A sous! give 

tw'elve, said the supplicant; Nature has been bountiful to you; 
be bountiful to a poor man. 

— I would, friend, with all my heart, said the younger, if 
1 had it. 

— My fairchari table! said he, addressing himself to the elder, 
— what is.it but your goodness and humanity which makes your 
bright eyes so sweet, that they outshine the morning, even in this 
dark passage! and whalwas it which made the Marquis deSanterre 
and his brother say so much of you both as they just passed by? 

The two ladies Seemed much affected; and impulsively, at 
the same lime, they both put their hands into their pocket, and 
each took out a twelve-sous piece. 

The contest between them and the poor supplicant was no 
more, — it was continued belw'ixt themselves, which of the two 
should give the twelve-sous piece in charily; — and, to end the 
dispute, they both gave it together, and the man went away. 




THE RIDDLE EXPLAINED 

PARIS 


I stepped hastily after him : 
it was the very man whose 
success in asking charity of the 
women before the door of the 
hotel had so puzzled me; — and 
1 found at once his secret, or 
at least the basis of it : — ’twas 
flattery. 

Delicious essence ! how 
lefreshing aid thou to Nature! how strongly arc all its powers 
and all its weaknesses on thy side! how sweetly dost thou mix 
with the blood, and help it through the most difficult and 
tortuous passages of the heart ! 

The poor man, as he was not straitened for lime, had given 


• •v-V 




-C 185 >- 


il here in a larger dose : ’lis certain he had a way of bringing it 
into less form, for the many sudden cases he had to do with in the 
streets; but how he contrived to correct, sweeten, concentrate, 
and qualify it, — 1 vex not my spirit with theinquiry; — it isenough, 
the beggar gained two twelve-sous pieces, — and they can best 
tell the rest who have gained much greater matters by it. 




PARIS 


We get forwards in the world, 
not so much by doing services as 
receiving them : you take a withering 
twig, and put it into the ground ; and 
then you water it, because you have 
planted it. 

Mons. le Comte de B , merely 

because he had done me one kindness 
in the affair of the passport, would go 
on and do me another, the few days he was at Paris, in making 
me known to a few people of rank; and they were to present 
me to others, and so on. 

I had got master of m} secret just in time to turn these 
honours to some little account; otherwise, as is commonly the 



187 >- 


case, I should have drned or supped a single time or two round ; 
and then, by translating French looks and attitudes into plain 
English, I should presently have seen that I had got hold of the 
couvert * of some more entertaining guest ; and, in course, should 
have resigned all my places, one after another, merely upon 
the principle that 1 could not keep them. — As it was, things did 
not go much amiss. 

1 had the honour of being introduced to the old Marquis de 

B . In days of yore he had signalized himself by some small 

feats of chivalry in the Cour d’ Amour, and had dressed himself 
out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since. — The Marquis 

de B wished to have it thought the affair was somewhere 

else than in his brain, “ Hecould like to take a trip to England 

and asked much of the English ladies. Stay where you are, 

I beseech you, Mons. le Marquis, said 1 Les Messieurs 

Anglois can scarce get a kind look from them as it is. The 

Marquis invited me to supper. 

Mons. P , the farmer-general, was just as inquisitive 

about our taxes. — They were very considerable, he heard. — - 
If we knew but how to collect them, said I, making him a low 
bow. 

I could never have been invited to Mons. P 's concerts 

upon any other terms. 

I had been misrepresented to Madame tie Q as an 

esprit . — Madame de Q was an esprit herself: she burnt with 

impatience to see me, and hear me talk. I had not taken my 
seat, before 1 saw' she did not care a sous whether I had any wit 
or no — 1 was let in to be convinced she had.— I call Heaven to 
witness I never once opened the door of my lips. 

Madame de V vowed to every creature she met, — “ she 

had never had a more improving conversation with a man in her 
life.” 


* Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon. 


■< lb8 > 


There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman : 
— She is coquette, — then Deist, — then devote : the empire during 
these is never lost; — she only changes her subjects; when thirty- 
five years and more have unpeopled her dominions of the slaves 
of love, she repeoples it with the slaves of infidelity, and then 
with the slaves of the church. 

Madame de V was vibrating betwixt the first of these 

epochas : the colour of the rose was fading fast away ; — she ought 
to have been a Deist five years before the time I had the honour 
to pay my first visit. 

She placed me upon the same sofa with her, for the sake of 
disputing the point of religion more closely. — In short, Madame 

de V told me she believed nothing. — I told Madame de V 

it might be her principle; but I was sure it could not be her 
interest tp level the outworks, without which I could not 
conceive how such a citadel as hers could be defended; — that 
there was not a more dangerous thing in the world than for a 
beauty to be a Deist; — that it was a debt I owed my creed, not 
to conceal it from her; that I had not been five minutes upon the 
sofa beside her, before I had begun to form designs ; — and what 
is it but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had 
excited in her breast, which could have checked them as they 
rose up? 

— We are not adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand; 
—and there is need of all restraints, till Age in “his own lime 
steals in and lays them on us. — But, my dear lady, said I, kissing 
her hand, — ’ tis too — too soon. 

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting 

Madame de V — She affirmed to Mons. D and the 

Abbe M that in one half hour I had said more for revealed 

religion than all their Encyclopaedia had said against it, — I was 

lifted directly into Madame de V ’s coterie; — and she put off 

the epocha of Deism for two years. 


-C 180 >- 


1 remember it was in this coterie , in the middle of a 
discourse^Jn which 1 was showing the necessity cf a first cause, 
that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the 
farthest corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was pinned 

too strait about my neck. It should be plus badinant , said the 

Count, looking down upon his own; — but a word, Mons. Yorick, 
to the wise — 

— And from the wise , Mons. le Comte, replied I, making 
him a bow, — is enough. 

The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour 
than ever I was embraced by mortal man. 

Fo: three weeks together, 1 was of every man’s opinion I 

met. Pardi! ce Mons. Yorick a autant d’ esprit que nousautres, 

II raisonne bien, said another. C’estun bon enfant, said a 

third. — And at this price I could have eaten and drunk and been 
merry all the days of my life at Paris; but ’twas a dishonest 
reckoning ; — I grew ashamed of it : — it was the gain of a 
slave : — every sentiment of honour revolted against it; — the 
higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly 
system; — the better the coterie , — the more children of Art, — 
I languished for those of Nature; and one night after a most 
vile prostitution of myself to half-a-dozen different people, I 
grewsick, — went to bed; ordered La Fleur to get me horses in 
the morning, to set out for Italy. 




MARIA 

MOULINES 


l never felt what the distress of plenty 
was in any one shape till now, — to trave 
it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest 
part of France, in the hey-day of the 
vintage, when Nature is pouring her abun- 
dance into every one’s lap, and every eye 
is lighted up, — a journey through each 
step of which music beats time to Labour , 
and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their 
clusters; — to pass through this with my affections flying out, and 
kindling at every group before me, — and every one of them 
was pregnant with adventures. — 

Just Heaven! — it would fill up twenty volumes; — and alas! 
I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into, — and 




Wm 




, -J* ! $h^f 


WMjgfl 




KltiWliittw 





































































* 













































-c 1 !) 1 » 


half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria m\ friend 
Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines. 

The story he had told of that disordered maid affected me 
not a little in the reading; but when 1 got within the neighbour- 
hood where she lived, it returned so strongly into my mind, that 
I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a 
league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, 
to inquire after her. 

’Tis going, I own, like the Knightof the Woeful Countenance, 
in quest of melancholy adventures; — I know not how it is, but I 
am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within 
me, as when I am entangled in them. 

The old mother came to the door ; her looks told me the story 
before she opened her mouth. — She had lost her’ husband; he had 
died, she said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria’s sense, about 
a month before. — She had feared at first, she added, that it 
would have plundered her poorgirl of what liltleunderstanding 
was left; but, on the contrary, it had brought her more to herself; 
— still she could not rest. — Her poor daughter, she said, crying, 
was wandering somewhere about the road. 

— Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and 
what made La Fleur, whose heart seemed only to be tuned to 
joy, to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the 
woman stood and told it? I beckoned to the postilion to turn 
back into the road. 

When we had got within half a league of Moulines, at a 
little opening in the road, leading to a thicket, 1 discovered poor 
Maria sitting under a poplar. She. was sitting with her elbow in 
her lap, and her head leaning on one side within her hand : 
— a small brook ran at the foot of the tree. 

I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulines; — and 
La Fleur to bespeak my supper; — and that I would walk after 
him. 


-< |«I2 v 


She was dressed in while, and much as my friend de- 
scribed her, except that her hair hung loose, which before was 
twisted with a silken net. She had superadded likewise to her 
jacket a pale green riband, which fell across her shoulder to 
the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe. — Her goal had 
been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in 
lieu of him, which she kept tied by a string to her girdle. As I 
looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string. 

“Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio,” said she. I looked in 

Maria’s eyes, and saw she was thinking more of her father 
than of her Jover, or her little goat ; for, as she uttered them, the 
tears trickled down her cheeks. 

1 sat down close by her; and Maria let me wipe them away 
as they fell, w ith my handkerchief. — 1 then steeped it in my own, 
— and then in hers, — and then in mine,— and then I wiped hers 
again ; — and as I did it, I felt such' undescribable emotions 
Within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any 
combinations of matter and motion 

1 am positive I have a soul ; nor can all the books with which 
materialists have pestered the world, ever convince me to the 
contrary. 




MARIA 


When Maria had come a little 
lo herself, 1 asked her if she remem- 
bered a pale Ihin person of a man, 
who had sat down betwixt her and 
her goat about two years before? 

She said, she was unseti'ed 

much at that time, but. remembered 
it upon two accounts^:.— That, ill as 
she was, she saw the person pitied 
her; and next, Thathergoat had stolen his handkerchief, and she 
had beat him lor the theft ; — she had washed.it, she said, in (lie 
brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket, to restore it to him, 
in case she should ever see him again ; which, she added, lie had 
half promised her. As she told me this, she took the handker- 
chief out of her pocket, lo let me sec it; she had. folded it up 



-C 194 >- 


neatly in a couple of vine-leaves, tied round with a tendril. — On 
opening it, I saw an S. marked in one of the corners. 

— She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, 
and walked round St. Peter’s once, — and returned : — that 
she found her way alone across the Apennines, — had travelled 
over all Lombardy without money, — and through the flinty roads 
of Savoy without shoes : — how she had borne it, and how she 
had got supported, she could not tell ; — but God tempers the 
wind , said Maria, to the shorn 
lamb. 

— Shorn indeed ! and to the 
quick, said I : — and wast thou in 
my own land , where I have a cot- 
tage, I would take thee to it, 
and shelter thee; thou shouldst - : 
eat of my own bread, and drink 
of my own cup; — I would be kind 
to thy Sylvio : — in all thy weak- 
nesses and wanderings I would 
seek after thee, and bring thee back; — when the sun went down 
I would say my prayers ; and when I had done, thou shouldst 
play thy evening-song upon thy pipe: nor would the incense 
of my sacrifice be worse accepted for entering Heaven along 
with that of a broken' heart! 

Nature melted within me as I uttered this ; and Maria 
observing, as I took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped 
too much already to be of use, would needs go wash it in the 

stream. And where will you dry it, Maria? said 1. I’ll 

dry it in my bosom, said she; — ’twill do me good. 

— And is your heart still so warm, Maria? said I. 

I touched upon the string on which hung all her sorrows; 
— she looked with wistful disorder for some time in mv face; 
and then, without saying anything, took her pipe,. and played 



-C 195 


her service to the Virgin.— The string I had touched ceased to 
vibrate; in a moment or two Maria returned to herself, — let her 
pipe fall, — and rose up. 

— And where are you going, Maria? said 1. She said, 

to Moulines. Let us go, said I, together. — Maria put her arm 

within mine, and lengthening the string to let the dog follow, — 
in that order we entered Moulines. 




MARIA 

MOULINES 


Though I hate salutations and 
/ greetings in the market-place, yet, 
when we got into the middle of this, 
1 slopped to take my last look and 
last farewell of Maria. 

Maria, though not tall, was 
nevertheless of the first order of 
fine forms : — affliction had touched 
her looks with something that was scarce earthly ; still she was 
feminine ; and so much was there about her of all that the 
heart wishes, or the eye looks for, in woman, that, could the 
traces be ever worn out of her brain, and those of Eliza 
out of mine, she should not only eat of my bread and drink 



-c 1 07 


of my on>n cup, but Maria should lie in mv bosom, and be 
'unlo me as a daughter. 

Adieu, poor luckless maiden ! — Imbibe the oil and wine 
which the compassion of a stranger, as he journeveth on his 
way, now pours into thv wounds; — the Being who has twice 
bruised thee can onl\ bind them up forever. 




THE BOURBONNOIS 


There was nothing from which lhad painted 
out for myself so joyous a riot of the affections, 
as in this journey in the vintage, through this 
part of France; but pressing through this gate 
of sorrow to it, my sufferings have totally 
unfitted me. In every scene of festivity I saw 
Maria in the background of the piece, .sitting 
pensive under her poplar; and I had got almost 
to Lyons before I was able to cast a shade 
across her 

— Dear Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious 
in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! — thou chainest thy martyr 
down upon his bed of straw, — and ’tis thou who liflest him up to 
Heaven! — Eternal fountain of our feeling! — ’tis here I trace thee, 
— and this is thy “ divinity which stirs within me ;" — not that, in 



199 >- 


some sad and sickening moments, “my soul shrinks back upon 
herself \ and startles at destruction /”• — mere pomp of words ! — but 
that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond 
myself ; — all comes from thee, great, — great Sensorium of the 
world ! which vibrates, if a hair of our heads but fall upon the 
ground in the remotest desert of thy creation. — Touched with 
thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish, — hears my 
tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of 
his nerves. Thou givest a portion of it sometimes to the roughest 
peasant who traverses the bleakest mountains ; — he finds the 
lacerated lamb of another’s flock. — This moment I behold him 
leaning with his head against his crook, with piteous inclination 
looking down upon it! — Oh! had I gone one moment sooner ! — 
it bleeds to death! — his gentle heart bleeds with it! 

Peace to thee, generous sw'ain ! — 1 see thou walkest off with 
anguish, — but thy joys shall balance it; for happy is thy cottage, 
— and happy is the sharer of it, — and happy are the lambs 
which sport about you. 




THE SUPPER 


A shoe coming loose from the fore- 
foot of the thill-horse at the beginning 
of the ascent of Mount Taurira, the 
poslilion dismounted, twisted the shoe 
off. and put it in his pdckeL As the 
ascent was of five or six miles, and that 
horse our main dependence, I made a 
point of having the shoe fastened on 
again as well as v\e could ; but the 
poslilion had thrown away the nails; and the hammer, in the 
chaise-box being of no great use without them, 1 submitted 
to go on. 

lie had not mounted half a mile higher, when, coming to a 
flinty piece of road, the poor deviNost a second shoe, and from 



-< 201 >- 


off his other fore-foot. I then got out of the chaise in good ear- 
nest; and seeing a house about a quarter of a mile to the left 
hand, with a great deal to do, I prevailed upon the postilion to 
turn up to it. The look of the house, and of everything about it, 
as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster. — It was 
a little farm-house, surrounded with about twenty acres of vine- 
yard, about as much corn ; and close to the house, on one side, was 
a potagerie of an acre and a half, full of everything which could 
make plenty in a French peasant’s house; and, on the other side, 
was a little wood, which 

furnished wherewithal ^ ^ 

to dress it. It was about 
eight in the evening 
when I got to the 
house, — so I left the 
postilion to manage his 
point as he could ; and, 
for mine, I walked 
directly into the house. 

The family consisted of an old grey-headed man and his 
wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-law, and their seve- 
ral wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them. 

They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soup; a 
large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table ; and a flagon 
of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the 
repast : — ’twas a feast of. love. 

The old man rose up to meet me, and, with a respectful 
cordiality, would have me sit down at the table ; my heart was 
set down the moment I entered the room : so I sat down at once, 
like a son of the family ; and, to invest myself in the character as 
speedily as 1 could, I instantly borrowed the old man’s knife, 
and, taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon ; and, as I 
did it, 1 saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest wel- 



-C 202 - 


come, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed 
to doubt it. ‘ 

Was it this? or, tell me, Nature, what else it was, that made 
this morsel so sweet, — and to what magic 1 owe it, that the 
draught 1 took of their flagon was so delicious with it, that they 
remain upon my palate to this hour? 

If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it 
was much more so 




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THE GRACE 

When supper was over, the old man 
gave a knock upon the table with the 
haft of his knife, to bid them prepare 
for the dance : the moment the signal 
was given, the women and girls ran 
altogether into a back apartment to tie 
up their hair, — and the young men to 
the door to wash their faces, and 
change their sabots ; and, in three mi- 
nutes, every soul was ready upon a little esplanade before 
the house to begin. — The old man and his wife came out last, 
and, placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by 
the door. 

The old man had, some fifty years ago, been no mean per- 
former upon the vielle,— and. at the age he w as then of, touched 



- 204 


it well enough for the purpose. His wife sang now and then a 
little to the tune, — then intermitted, — and joined her old man 
again as their children and grandchildren danced before them. 

It was not till the middle of the second dance, when, from 
some pauses in the movement wherein they all seemed to look 
up, I fancied l could distinguish an elevation of spirit different 
from that which is the cause or the effect of simple jollity. In a 
word, 1 thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance; — but, as 
I had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked upon it 
now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally 
misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, 
said that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he 
had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family 
to dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a cheerful and 
contented mind was the best sort of thanks to Heaven that an 
illiterate peasant could pay 

— Ora learned prelate either, said I. 



I 



THE CASE OF DELICACY 



jpPM When \ou have gained the lop of 

m'v^Vv Mount Taurira, you run presently down 
i<> L^ ons; — adieu then to all rapid move- 
ments ! — ’tis a journey of caution; and it 
fares belter with sentiments not to be in a 
^ hurry with them; so I contracted with a 
roiturin to lake his lime with a couple of mules, anti .convey 
mt* in my own chaise safe lo Turin, through Savoy. 

Poor, patient, quiet, honest people! fear not; your poverty, 
the treasury of your simple virtues, will not be envied you by 
the world, nor will your vallies be invaded by it. — Nature! in the 
midst of thy disorders, thou art still friendly lo the scantiness 
thou hast created: with all thy great works about thee, little 
hast thou left to give, either to the se\lhe or to the sickle — but to 


b 

-C -200 -- 

that little thou grantest safety a-d "ole* eet are the 

dwellings which stand so sheltered 

Let the way-worn travel’ plaints upon the 

Ulcn turns and dangers of .our rocks, your pre- 
cipice the difficulties o* t ip, the horrors of getting 

down, mountains impracticable, — and cataracts, which roll down 
great stones from their summits, and block up his road. The 
peasants had been all-day at work in removing a fragment of this 
kind between St. Michael and Madame; and, by the time m\ voitu- 
rin got to the place, it wanted full two hours of completing, before 
a passage could am how be gained. There was nothing but to wait 
with patience; — ’twas a wet and tempestuous night; so that by 
the delay and that together, the voiturin found himself obliged to 
put up live miles short of his stage, at a little decent kind of an inn 
by the roadside. 

1 forth w ith look possession of my bed-chambc r, got a good lire, 
ordered supper, and was thanking Heaven it was n> worse, — 
— w hen a voiturin arrived with a lady in it, and her servant-maid. 

As there was no other bed-chamber in the house, thehostess, 
without much nicely, led them into mine, telling them, as she 
ushered them in, that there was nobody in it but an English 
gentleman; — that there were two good beds in it, and a closet 
within the room which held another. The accent in which she 
spoke of this third bed, did not say much for it — however, she 
said there were three beds, and but three people, — and she 
durst say the gentleman would do anything to accommodate 

matters. 1 left the lady not a moment to make a conjecture 

about it, so instantly made a declaration that 1 would do anything 
in my power. 

\s this did not amount to an absolute surrender of my bed- 
chamber, I still felt myself so much the proprietor, as to have a 
right to do the honours of it; — so 1 desired the lady to sit down, 
pressed her into the warmest seat, called for more wood, desired 


207 >- 


the hostess to enlarg ^ tnJ, 

with the very best wine. 


*pper, and to favour us 


The lady had scarce war; 
before she began to turn her he«u 
beds: and the oftener she cast* her 


~ mutes at the fire, 
give a look at the 
a Way, the more they 


returned perplexed. — I felt for her — and for myself ; for in a few 
minutes, what by her looks, and the case itself, I found myself as 
much embarrassed as it was possible the lady could be herself. 

That the beds we were to lie in were in one and the same 
room, was enough simply by itself to have excited all this ; — but 
. the position of them (for they stood parallel, and so very close to 
each other, as only to allow a space for a small wicker-chair 
betwixt them) rendered the affair still more oppressive to us ; — 
they were fixed up, moreover, near the fire, and the projection 
of the chimney on one side, and a large beam which crossed the 
room on the other, formed a kind of recess for them that was no 
way favourable tc the nicety of our sensations: — if anything 
could have added to it, it was that the two beds were both of them 
so very small, as to cut us off from every idea of the lady and the 
maid lying together, which, in either of them, could it have been 
feasible, my lying beside them, though a thing not to be wished, 
yet there was nothing in it so terrible which the imagination 
might not have passed over without torment. 

As for the little room within, it offered little or no consola- 
tion to us: ’twas a damp, cold closet, with a half dismantled 
window-shutter, and with a window which had neither glass 
nor oil-paper in it to keep out the tempest of the night. I did not 
endeavour to stifle my cough when the lady gave a peep into it; 
so it reduced the case in course to this alternative, — That the 
lady should sacrifice her health to her feelings, and take up with 
the closet herself, and abandon the bed next mine to her maid, 
— or, that the girl should take the closet, etc. 

The lady was a Piedmontese of about thirty, with a glow of 


- 208 » 


health in her cheeks. The maid was n Lyonoisc of twenty, and 
as brisk and lively a French girl as ever moved. There were dif- 
ficulties every way, — and the obstacle of the stone in the road, 
which brought us into the distress, great as it appeared whilst 
the peasants were removing it, was but a pebble to what lay in 
our way now — I have only to add, that it did not lessen the 
weight which hung upon our spirits, that we were both too 
delicate to communicate what we felt to each other upon the 
occasion. 

We sal down to supper; and, had we not had more gene- 
rous wine to it than a little inn in Savoy could have furnished, 
our tongues had been lied up till Necessity herself had set them 
at liberty; — but the lady having a few bottles of Burgundy in her 
voilure. sent down her fille de ehambre fora couple of them ; so 
that by the time supper was over, and we were left alone, we 
felt ourselves inspired with a strength of mind sufficient to talk, 
at least, without reserve, upon our situation. We turned it every 
wav, and debated and considered it in all kinds of lights in the 
course of a two hours' negotiation : at the end of which the 
articles were scllled finally betwixt us. and stipulated for in form 
.md manner of a treaty of peace, — and, I believe, with as much 
religion and good faith on both sides, as in any treaty which has 
vcl had the honour of being handed down to posterity. 

They were as follows:— 

First. \s the right of the bed-chamber is in Monsieur, — and 
he thinking the bed next to the fire to be the w armest, he insists 
upon the concession on the lady's side of taking up with it. 

('•ranted on the part of Madame: xxilh a proviso. That, as 
the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and 
appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the Jill e dc ehambre 
shall fasten up the opening, either by corking-pins or needle 
and thread, in such a manner as shall be deemed a sufficient 
barrier on the side of Monsieur. 










Second. It is required on the part of Madame, that 
Monsieur shall lie the whole night through in his robe de chambre. 

Rejected: inasmuch, as Monsieur is not worth a robe de 
chambre; he Inning nothing in his portmanteau bn! six shirts 
and a black silk pair of breeches. 

The mentioning the silk pair of breeches made an entire 
change of the article. — for the breeches were accepted as an 
equivalent for the robe de chambre ; and so it-was stipulated and 
agreed upon, that I should lie in my black silk breeches all night. 

Third. It was insisted upon, and stipulated for, by the ladv, 
that after Monsieur was got to bed, and the candle and lire extin- 
guished. Monsieur should not speak one single word the 
whole night 

Granted, provided Monsieur’s saying his prayers might not 
be deemed an infraction of the treaty. 

There was but one point forgotin this 'treaty, and that was 
the manner in which the lady and myself should be obliged to 
undress and gel to bed ; — there was one wa\ of doing it. and that 
I leave to the reader to devise, protesting as 1 do it. that if it is 
not the most delicate in nature, — ’I is the fault of his own imagi- 
nation. — against w Inch this is not my first complaint. 

Now when we were got to bed. whether it was the noveltx 
of the situation, or what it was. 1 know not ; but so it was. I could 
not shut my eyes: I tried this side and that, and turned and turned 
again, till a full hour after midnight, when Nature and Patience 
both wearing out, — O my God ! said I. 

— You have broken the treaty. Monsieur, said the lady, who 
had no more slept than myself. — I begged a thousand pardons : 
but insisted it was no more than an ejaculation. She main- 
tained ’twas an entire infraction of the treaty. 1 maintained 

it was provided for in the clause of the third article. 

The lady would by no means give up the point, though she 
weakened her barrier b\ it : for. in the warmth of the dispute, I 


>10 >- 


could hear two or three corking-pins fall out of the curtain to the 
ground. 

— Upon my word and honour, 'Madame, said I, stretching 
my arm out of bed byway of asseveration — 

(I was going to have added, that I would not have trespassed 

against the remotest idea of decorum for the world) — 

* 

— But the Jille de chambre hearing there were words between 
us, and fearing that hostilities would ensue in course, had crept 
silently out of her closet; and, it being totally dark, had stolen so 
close to our beds, that she had got herself into the narrow pas- 
sage which separated them, and had advanced so far up as to be 
in aline betwixt her mistress and me; — 

So that, when l stretched ouf my hand, l caught hold of the 
fille de chambre' s 





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